


like daylight

by deathstranded



Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Bi richie is valid as hell but hes gay here idk, Character Study, Coming Out, Dissociation, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Everyone is Alive Except Georgie Denbrough, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, I promise, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, It just takes a while, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Drug Use, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Therapy, Well - Freeform, but eddie is still married at the start, everyone is traumatised, lol, not between richie and eddie, pennywise is dead, sorry Hun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-01 03:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 93,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20807996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathstranded/pseuds/deathstranded
Summary: Bill says, “I never got it when people used to say my endings sucked. I guess - I just thought, life isn’t fair.” He pauses. “I get it now.”Mike says, “Life isn’t fair. You were right there. But - this ending does suck.”Eddie lives. They deal with the trauma.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be kind of a long fix-it focusing mostly on richie and eddie. as much as i love fix-its where they immediately admit their feelings and get married and adopt 60000 dogs, i wanted to try creating something that looks at how the fuck they would go about recovering from the trauma they've been through and how they love each other through that.
> 
> also yes this is inspired by the song daylight by reddie warrior taylor swift.

They stay there, in the water, scattered, as overhead the sky begins to darken. Bev and Ben are sitting together on a rocky outcrop, pressed close and talking quietly as their clothes slowly begin to dry. 

Evening is setting in.

Richie stays still, up to his hips, staring down into the water. He hasn’t moved since they hugged him, since he choked out that anguished cry the likes of which Mike has never heard before. Throughout all their childhood, he never heard Richie cry; not once. 

He watches him, sitting in the quarry. He can imagine him staying there, melting into the mud and then the bedrock, unmoving, forever. 

He doesn’t know how they’re going to get him up; get him on his feet; get him back to the Townhouse. He can’t even begin to think of Richie packing, of getting in his flashy rental car, of driving to the airport. How is he supposed to get to the other side of the country when he couldn’t even walk out of the collapsing caves, the sewers, the house on his own?

Mike is dog-tired. Tired down to his bones. The euphoria of defeating the clown, of ending It, of the triumphant climax of his life’s work has been utterly extinguished. Any glimmer of joy died back with Eddie under those rocks; drowned in the water where Richie now sits, silent, slump-shouldered, still. 

A breeze blows across the quarry. 

It is cold. 

A splash, and Mike looks up to see Bill settling down beside him. Their bodies, and Richie’s, form three sharp points of a triangle. 

They’ve all lost someone, of course. That is how life works. People are born, they live, they die. They leave people behind. Ben and Beverley have lost people, Mike knows. Beverley lost her mother - the gaping absence was filled, violently, by her father. Ben’s greatest fear was being alone.

But he and Bill - and Richie, now - it’s something different. 

Georgie. 

Mike’s parents. 

Eddie. 

Murder is different. Murder is especially different when the perpetrator is a demonic clown from outer space. 

They’ve all lost Eddie. They all love Eddie.

But they all held Richie back, heard Richie scream, saw Richie cry, felt Richie’s full-body sobs - 

They all knew what it meant. 

Mike thinks of how Richie used to tease Eddie as a kid. 

Mike thinks of how Richie’s face used to light up whenever Eddie set him up with a good line; whenever Eddie cussed him out.

How Richie had looked in the restaurant that first night, the moment he’d laid eyes on Eddie.

They all knew well enough. 

Beside him, Bill says, “we should go. Back.”

Back to the Townhouse. Back to Eddie’s two suitcases, and his toiletry bag, and the car Eddie had rented from the airport - not that he’d wanted to make the long drive from New York City, he’d told Mike, and he couldn’t anyhow - he’d crashed his own car when Mike had called him -

Mike nods. 

They do not move. Moving seems like a monumental task; as difficult as running a marathon; as climbing a mountain. 

Moving feels like saying goodbye. 

Bill shifts; breathes in. He says, “I never got it when people used to say my endings sucked. I guess - I just thought, life isn’t fair.” He pauses. “I get it now.”

Mike says, “Life isn’t fair. You were right there. But - this ending does suck.”

They stay where they are. The lake water lapping at their ankles is freezing now; biting, like tiny razors. It feels like penance. 

He can’t look at Richie anymore. He thinks if he does, he might cry again. He thinks he might wade out into the water and sit down next to his friend, and sink, sink into the earth with him, down, down, down, towards Eddie. 

The water bites his ankle again, harder this time. 

He looks downwards; starts. 

It’s not the water - it’s a snapping turtle. 

“Oh,” he says, “shoot.” He reaches down, prizes the animal off his leg. 

Bill looks. “You got bit?” He says. His eyes lose focus as he gazes into the middle distance, remembering. “It’s all coming back today.”

Years ago. After the clown. Before the Losers had to go back to school and Mike headed back to the farm, when the sun was still hot and high in the sky. Days spent playing in the water, here, in the quarry. Beverley bolder than all of them, always jumping first from the cliff. Wrestling, splashing, screaming. Convincing one another there was a turtle biting at their toes. Holding their breath and descending into the murky water to see nothing but pebbles and weeds. 

Mike nods, holding the creature at arms’ length, eyeing it up. It opens and closes its mouth, exposing its wet pink tongue, looking weirdly like an old man with no teeth, paddling its legs, swimming through the night air, illuminated by the stars which are just now beginning to appear. 

“Shooting star,” Bill says, suddenly. 

Mike doesn’t see it, but he thinks, looking back at Richie, placing the turtle gently back into the water, _I wish we got a better ending. _

*

Getting Richie out of the quarry and back to the Townhouse isn’t quite as difficult as dragging him out from under the rocks and the sewers and the house, but it still takes some effort.

In the end, Bill and Mike have to physically lift him from the water, guiding him to his feet. His legs wobble like those of a newborn foal. They help him out of the water, help him stagger ashore. He moves stiffly, drunkenly. He doesn’t say anything. 

Ben and Bev take over then, looping their arms through his, Ben on the left, Bev on the right. They walk back through the woods, back to the road, “One step at a time,” Ben says. 

Bill thinks that is how it will be from now on; one step at a time. One second, one minute, one hour, one day. 

They’ve killed It.

He feels like he should be more excited. 

As they stagger slowly back into town, Richie says - the one thing he’s said in hours - “He would hate it down there.”

Nobody says anything, at first, because Richie is right - until Bev finally says “I know, honey.” Bill thinks, not for the first time, that Beverley has always been the bravest of them all. 

They make it up onto the front porch, through the doors, up the stairs, and into Richie’s room. 

Ben says, “You wanna take a shower, Rich?”

Beverley is still holding onto his other arm, like she’s afraid he’ll collapse to the ground if she lets go. 

Bill thinks she’s probably right. 

Richie looks at Ben like he’s only just realised he’s there. Then he looks back at the rest of them. He seems surprised, like he’s not sure how he got to his room. 

“No,” he says, and he pulls away from Beverley, turns away from them, towards the bed. “No, I wanna...I wanna take a nap. I wanna sleep. I don’t wanna wake up.”

Nobody knows what to say to that. Nobody says anything. 

They watch Richie scrape off his shoes in silence, sit on the bed, lie down, his still-damp clothes tight against his skin. 

He doesn’t pull the covers back.

He doesn’t even close his eyes. 

He’s in shock, Bill thinks, and then he thinks, Eddie would know what to do. Eddie and his fanny pack full of medical supplies. But Eddie isn’t there, not anymore, and anyway Eddie hadn’t been good with the more...psychological aspects of trauma. 

He thinks about Eddie and his Asthma attacks; how Richie was the only one who seemed capable of pulling him out of them. 

He thinks about how those probably weren’t Asthma attacks after all. 

Beverley and Ben look back at him, helpless, and Bill realises he’s been designated leader again. 

He can’t think of what to do. 

He just says, “Get some sleep, Rich. I’m just next door. Bill and Beverley are downstairs. Do you...do you want us to come over later, man?”

Richie just shakes his head, slowly. 

Bill still doesn’t know what to do. He says, “Do you want one of us to stay, maybe?”

Richie says, “No,” but it’s a whisper, like his throat had closed up the moment he opened his mouth. There’s a single tear slicing its way slowly down his cheek like the tip of a knife. In the dim light of the hotel room, lying straight and still on his back, Bill thinks that Richie looks like a corpse. 

*

Beverley goes to buy cigarettes.

There are no more in her suitcase, and the one she usually keeps for emergencies in her purse she’d smoked earlier, convinced it was her last, shaking like a leaf and psyching herself up for what they were about to do. 

Back when she’d smoked that, Eddie had still been alive. 

She pushes that thought from her mind.

“Where are you going?” Ben says, as she fishes ten bucks from where she’d stashed it in a pair of socks; a childhood habit she’s never quite managed to shake. 

They’re words she’s heard before; from her father, from her husband (ex-husband, she thinks, soon, once they’re out of Derry and she can contact her fucking attorney), but from Ben they’re different; they’re not possessive. They’re not a threat. 

He sits down on the bed. The springs creak beneath him. In the lamplight, he’s gorgeous. 

“Cigarettes,” she says. 

“They’ll kill you,” Ben says, but again, it’s not a warning; it’s just a joke. He’s smiling; the same wondering smile, tipped up at the corners, that she remembers from childhood. She doesn’t know how she forgot it. It’s like he’s still surprised she’s here, the others are here, that they want to spend time with him. 

“Better the cigarettes than a demon clown,” she says, and instantly wishes she hadn’t. 

Eddie. Stan. Georgie. The other kids, kids they had gone to school with. Kids who had tormented her, kids who had ignored her, kids she’d never spoken a word to and had only passed in the hallways, but whom she now mourned, because she had seen the Deadlights, had felt the torture, the horror, the pain - 

“Hey, hey,” says Ben, and he’s on his feet, touching her shoulders with his big hands. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t say anything else, because really, what can he say? What can any of them say?

“Sorry,” she says, and Ben shakes his head. 

_Nothing to be sorry for. _

He lets her go, and she misses the warmth instantly. 

She looks back up. “I still need cigarettes,” she says.

Ben grins. “I know.”

She stinks, regardless - or more likely because - of their dip in the quarry. She should shower, she knows. But she needs a smoke first; needs to walk down the block, have a meaningless conversation with some guy behind a counter, blow grey plumes into the night. Then she’ll come back and Ben will be here, and he will open his arms, and then she can shower, and they can sleep. 

He touches her hair. “Want me to come?” he says.

She shakes her head. “I think - I just need a moment. I won’t be long.”

Ben says, “Okay,” and pulls her close, and kisses her forehead, and she thinks that it’s the nicest thing anyone has done for her in years.

Outside, the streets are quiet, and the air is still. Headlights of cars flicker on the main road, passing inconsistently, quietly. Somewhere in the distance a teenager is blaring house music. If she tries really hard, she can almost pretend that nothing happened today, beneath Derry, and that nothing ever did happen beneath Derry, and this is just a reunion with her childhood friends, and they are all waiting for her back at the hotel. All of them. 

Only almost. 

She stops at a convenience store that’s still open and buys a packet. She remembers swiping the same brand of cigarettes from this very store, years ago, quite suddenly, and she grins, despite herself, and tells the grizzled elderly man working the register to keep the change. 

She lights up only a pace away from the door of the store, tips her head, breathes in, breathes out, closes her eyes.

In the distance, she can hear people talking, and a car accelerating a street or two over, and in the store behind her the old man is listening to creaky, slow oldies on the radio. 

“Excuse me?” says a voice. 

Bev turns round. 

There’s a couple rounding the corner, a man and a woman, a good few years older than herself - early fifties, she would guess, and they have a little girl with them. Probably their granddaughter, Bev thinks. 

The woman says, “I’m so sorry to bother you, only, do you possibly have a phone I could borrow? I’m so useless, always leave mine at home.”

“Oh,” says Bev, “sure,” and she pulls the phone from her back pocket and hands it over. 

“Oh, thank you,” the woman says. She looks incredibly relieved. “I don’t suppose you know the number for the Derry Police Department, do you? We’re on vacation here - I’m sorry -”

“Uh, sorry,” Bev says. “Um, maybe the guy in this shop will know - are you okay? Is it an emergency?” She is suddenly gripped by fright; she is back in the Deadlights again, back in the sewers, in the hallucination of the toilet stall, drowning in taunts and blood. It hasn’t worked. Pennywise isn’t dead. It’s back. 

“Oh - no!” The woman says, apparently seeing her panic. “No - well - this little girl here has lost her mother, and she isn’t sure what her phone number is, and as we don’t know town we can’t take her home, so I said I’d call the police for her instead, and they’ll be able to help.”

Bev says, “Oh - gosh - good!” and she feels her lungs refilling with oxygen the way they had when she’d taken Ben’s hand back down there, and they were freed from It’s mind games.

The little girl blinks up at her, lower lip stuck out. She has a melasma mark on her face, and her clothes are kind of dirty, like she’s been crawling around in the woods all day. 

They go back into the store together, all four of them, and the woman gives Bev her phone back, and introduces herself as Susan. “This is Eric,” she says, gesturing towards her husband, as the elderly man behind the counter calls the number for the Derry Police from a landline in the tiny office in the corner of the store. 

The little girl doesn’t introduce herself; just stares stoically straight ahead. 

Bev says, “You okay, sweetie?” and the girl nods. 

Something seems off to Bev, but the police are on their way, apparently with the girl’s mom in tow, and the store clerk gives the girl a packet of skittles, and Eric puts his jacket across her shoulders, and she perches on a chair behind the counter, silently eating and swinging her legs back and forth, and Bev really has no reason to remain there any longer. 

So she leaves the store, and she heads back to the Townhouse. 

*

This is what Richie saw in the Deadlights:

He is back in LA, in his house. It’s mostly the same, only there’s a bunch of scatter cushions he’s pretty sure he doesn’t own on the sofa, and a few green houseplants on the windowsills, and a framed Bert and Ernie poster on the wall in the hallway.

There’s also a yappy little Pomeranian. 

He’s sitting at the dining table, tapping away on his Macbook, writing. He’s writing now, after a long time; his own stuff, good stuff, stuff that makes him laugh and makes his agent laugh, and even makes -

“You want coffee?”

Eddie leans around the island, holding two mugs aloft. 

Richie grunts, immersed in his work. 

“I’ll make you coffee. But that’s only because I happen to be fluent in asshole and I know that ‘ugh’ actually means, ‘Yes please, Eddie, I would like coffee, and also you are the light of my life and I am lucky to have you and yes I will let you get another dog.’”

Richie breaks off from the joke he’s writing about his dad and the McDonald’s drive-thru, cracking his neck and looking up at Eddie. 

“Yes, please Eddie Spaghetti, I would like a coffee, also you are the light of my life, I cannot get enough of that sweet little ass and the way you scream at me when I leave towels on the floor. Why do we need another dog?”

Eddie says, automatically rather than angrily, “Don’t call me Eddie Spaghetti. And I don’t scream.”

“My ears from last night beg to differ, baby.”

“Do you have different ears today than you did last night?”

Richie laughs, and Eddie, smiling, turns away, busying himself with the Keurig.

“What’s this about another dog, then? You know I hate the little asshole we already have.”

Eddie glares at him from across the room. “You do not.”

“Yes I do.”

The asshole in question yaps from beside Richie’s feet, with enough force to propel itself several inches forwards across the wooden floors. Richie had told Eddie they could get a dog if he was allowed to name it. Reluctantly, Eddie had agreed, and at once Richie had proclaimed the fluffy Pomeranian Eddie had found on the shelter website to be named Cumlord. Eddie had told him to suck a dick. 

The dog now responds to both Hugo and Cumlord, on the rare occasions it feels like responding at all. Eddie tells Richie that it takes after him because it knows how to sit, and stay, and heel, and lay down - it’s just selective about when it chooses to. It barks every time someone comes to the door, or when the phone rings, and it insists on chewing all of Richie’s shoes - exclusively Richie’s. Eddie adores it, and lets it sleep on the bed between them at night. 

Richie says, “I don’t want another fuzzy little cockblocker in the house. Did you see what that dumb dog did to my last pair of sneakers?”

“They were fucking disgusting anyway,” Eddie says, and he bends over, patting his knees in an attempt to entice the dog to him. “Weren’t they, Hugo? Weren’t they? Hm? Daddy’s shoes were disgusting, yes!”

Hugo, or Cumlord, just yawns and ignores him. 

Richie says, “Call me Daddy again and I’ll think about getting you another nasty little rat dog.”

Eddie sniffs, straightening up and pointedly ignoring him while he pours out the coffee.

They drink coffee together, one of their morning rituals, on the days when Eddie’s not working. Sometimes Richie writes, or replies to his Twitter mentions and emails from his agent, and Eddie reads him the news and makes angry noises about the president. 

This morning, Eddie rests his elbow on the tabletop, and leans his head against his hand, and watches Richie write. 

Richie writes for another couple of minutes, until his coffee isn’t quite scalding anymore, then shuts his laptop, and reaches for Eddie’s free hand across the table. 

“Alright,” he says, “what fucking asshole of an animal have you found this time?”

Eddie’s face assumes an expression of triumph. He grabs his phone and pulls up the shelter page instantly, landing on a picture of a fat, fluffy blob with a squashed in face that looks like it’s been beaten with a shovel.

“Are you serious?” Richie says. “That thing?”

“It’s cute!” Eddie insists. 

Richie says, “Oh my god,” and takes the phone, peering at the screen, trying to ignore the fact that he can see Eddie smirking from the corner of his eye, knowing he’s already won. The little fucker’s probably already called the shelter and put the deposit down, he thinks. 

“Cumlord won’t like it.”

Eddie says, “_Hugo _would love a baby brother.”

Richie rolls his eyes, looks back at his phone. 

“It is kinda cute, actually,” he concedes. 

Eddie says, “So -”

Richie says, “Okay, you know what, fine. Whatever.” He passes Eddie his phone back, leans back in his seat, spreads his legs wide open. “But first, you gotta give daddy some sugar.”

“Oh my god. You are fucking -” Eddie lets go of his hand, aims a wild slap at his am. 

Richie catches his wrist, laughing as Eddie tells him to fuck off, that he’s an asshole, draws him down to his mouth. 

The sun shining in through the big french windows is warm and bright. Cumlord - Hugo - trots across the floor, finds a patch of light to his liking, and flops down on his side, tiny legs stretched out as far as he can reach them. The room smells like coffee, and Eddie’s expensive shampoo, and Eddie’s hand softens in his own.

When Bev had told them about what she’d seen in the Deadlights, about how she’d seen them return as adults, about how she’d seen Stan in the bathtub, wrists two straight red lines, they had all thought they understood; the Deadlights showed you the future. 

But the moment Richie had cupped Eddie’s face in his hands back beneath the sewers, looked in his eyes, touched his neck, felt for his pulse and found nothing, he’d realised. 

The Deadlights did not show the future. 

The Deadlights were just another form of cruel, psychological torture. 

It had known what he feared; what he wanted more than anything. And It had shown him that; dangled it before him like a worm on a fisherman’s hook, then snatched it away as quickly and as painfully as a stab through the gut. 

*

Ben sits on Beverley’s bed, and he waits. 

They haven’t really talked yet, about whether he can stay the night or not, but she let him into her room, and she let him stay there when she while out to buy cigarettes, and when she got back she’d smiled at him and said that she was going to take a shower, and made no move to remove him. 

So he stays.

He’s tired, but he wants to talk. They haven’t had chance to talk properly yet, not alone, not without the others. 

They’d kissed at the quarry. They’d sunk down underwater, and kissed, and it had been one of the best moments of his life until they’d resurfaced and he’d seen Richie, still sat there, still unmoving, still. 

He’d felt awful, then. 

Richie hadn’t noticed them, he thinks. Richie hadn’t seen. But then he supposes that a bomb could have gone off beside them and Richie still wouldn’t have moved an inch. 

Richie’s mind had been back beneath the old house on Neibolt street, back beneath the floorboards and the well and the pipes. 

Richie’s mind will probably stay there forever now, he thinks. 

He can’t believe Eddie’s gone. He feels like it hasn’t quite hit him yet. He feels like he’s going to wake up tomorrow, or in a week, or even a month, and it’s going to come crashing in; the truth, the realisation that he’s lost a friend again, and this time, there is no chance for a reunion. 

He remembers when he’d first met them - all of the Losers - and how they’d stolen all those medical supplies for him from the pharmacy, and Eddie, sniping away at Richie and Stan, talking a mile a minute, had patched him up.

Richie had done some stupid voices, he remembers, sudddenly. 

Stan had asked Eddie why he had two fanny packs. 

He closes his eyes, tips his head back until it hits the headboard with a soft _thunk_.

He wonders what Richie’s doing; if he’s still lying on top of the bed, on the sheets and the duvet, still dirty, still fully clothed, still staring up at the ceiling, unseeing. 

He tries to imagine how he would have felt if it had been Bev. The thought is too horrible. He pushes it away. 

In the bathroom, the water turns off, and he hears footfalls as Bev climbs out of the tub. The window across the room is open, and now without the shower running, he can hear a dog barking in the distance, a car honking, crickets. Downstairs, a door opens. He focuses on the sounds, breathing in deeply, slowly, trying to ground himself, tying himself to the moment. 

He feels like he might drift off to sleep, but he has to stay awake. He wants to talk to Bev. Wants to see her again too, see her face, even though it hasn’t been ten minutes since he last looked at her eyes, her smile. It’s kind of dumb, he thinks; now, now they’ve finally killed the clown, they can relax; they have the rest of their lives to look at one another, to talk. But they’ve lost so much time already, and he doesn’t want to waste another second. He’s already itching to see her again, just like that first summer, when they were kids, when he was always looking over his shoulder for her bright hair and long legs and laughing mouth. 

He wonders what they’re going to do tomorrow; whether they’re going to go downstairs and check out, and go for breakfast like nothing happened. He wonders whether anybody has found the blood in Eddie’s bathroom yet; whether they’ve assumed it was from a shaving cut and just mopped it up, eyes Derry-deadened, or whether they panicked and called the police. Nobody has knocked on their doors yet, asking for a statement, so he presumes not. 

Then he thinks about Henry Bowers, and it startles him, the fact that he’d so easily pushed aside the fact that Richie had literally killed a guy. What will happen with that, he wonders? Is that just another thing the cops in this godforsaken town will let slip? He thinks he should call Mike, wherever he is, either with Bill or watching over Richie, or on his way back home, and ask what he’s going to do about the body in his library. 

Perhaps they’ll all congregate tomorrow for one final hurrah, he thinks, the final five, and dispose of a body. One last adventure. Perhaps tip Bowers into the sewers where he belongs, or the river. Ben doesn’t really care. 

He wonders what they will do with Eddie’s stuff; the ridiculous amount of luggage he brought with him. Will they ship it back to New York? Will they leave it here, in Derry?

He wonders what they’ll do about his death. Do they need to tell someone, he asks himself? Should they report him missing? He wonders, vaguely, if he ought to ask Mike if he could dig up some contact details for Eddie’s wife - whether one of them should call her and let her know. He realises he knows nothing about Eddie’s wife. Widow, now. He wonders if she’s beautiful; what she’s like. He imagines that she has a sense of humour; that she’s laid back enough to deal with all Eddie’s various neuroses. 

Then again, Eddie had hardly mentioned her the entire time they were together. He probably wouldn’t have, Ben thinks, if Richie hadn’t brought it up. He thinks about Bev’s husband, then; the bruises on her arms he’s seen and said nothing about. 

He doesn’t like to think about that too much. He keeps his eyes shut; lets his head fall back into the pillows.

By the time Bev comes out of the bathroom, his mouth is open and he is asleep. 

Outside, the night is still.

*

When Eddie opens his eyes it’s dark. Pitch black. Wherever he is, he doesn’t think sunlight has ever touched. 

He’s also in pain. A hell of a lot of pain. More pain than he thinks he’s ever felt before in his life. 

He feels like he’s been punched, like he’s bruising, right in the centre of his stomach and through to his back, but the pain is weirdly sharp, stinging, hot. 

He groans, gritting his teeth, putting a hand to his stomach. 

He feels blood. 

He panics instantly, kicking his legs until he’s sat in a more upright position, back and neck and head pressed against the damp darkness behind him. His head is spinning.

There’s a wound on his stomach, he knows, a bad one, but he can still breathe. He can still breathe. 

The scent of copper is tangy in the air. It burns this sides of his tongue, his nostrils.

In the darkness, he is alone. 

He sits still, breathing hard, slowly, deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, counting the seconds - in for three, out for six, in for three, out for six, just like Richie’d taught him. 

He stiffens. 

Richie. 

He looks around. HIs surroundings lurch and pop, as though he’s been smacked in the head. 

He can’t see too well, but still, he knows - there is nobody there. Nobody at all. 

Not for the first time in his life, Eddie Kaspbrak is completely, utterly alone. 

Where are the others?

He struggles against the hard ground again, still cupping his stomach, his body throbbing with the effort of it all. 

They’d all been here. Richie, Bill, Mike, Bev, Ben. They’d all been here. Fighting - fighting that _thing._ So where are they now?

“Richie?” he calls, and his voice is hatefully small. It echoes and rolls and quivers away into nothing in the rock-filled cavern. “Rich?”

Nothing. 

“Bill?”

Again, nothing. 

He tries them all - all their names, again and again.

No reply. 

There is not another sound. Nothing, nothing at all, in the thick, heavy dark. 

He waits. Waits for the leper to reappear, or the clown. He doesn’t blink - keeps staring out into the black, waiting for heavy, wet, growling breaths, or that laughter, or his name. He waits for those yellow eyes. 

Nothing. 

The cave seems smaller than it had before. Everything feels closer to him. The walls are too tight and too high. 

The air is thick with dust. Out of habit, he reaches for his pocket, but his inhaler isn’t there. Of course. He’d thrown it in the fucking fire. His chest tightens with fear. He’s going to die. He’s going to die down here; bleed out, or choke, alone and frightened in the dark. 

He had thought he’d already died, though. 

Perhaps he is already dead. 

Eddie closes his eyes against the blackness and the tears threatening to spill; thinks; remembers. 

He feels like he’s been doing nothing but remembering lately.

The clown, monstrous and deformed and gigantic, bigger than it had ever been when they were kids. 

Mike, hoisted into the air. Everything had happened so fast; moved so quickly. 

Richie had shouted at It, had, inexplicably, called It a _sloppy bitch_.

Richie, held aloft. 

The white light. 

Richie, body slack, eyes rolled back, empty. 

He’d been so afraid, then - _so _fucking afraid. More afraid than he’d ever been, he thinks. 

Of the two of them, Richie is the brave one. Richie is the one who doesn’t give a fuck, who says whatever he thinks and feels, and doesn’t give a damn about what other people think. Even when Richie was being tormented in school by Bowers and his gang, or when the teachers would yell at him to shut up, would tell him he’d never get anywhere with an attitude like that, when the other kids had called him annoying or made fun of him - Richie had never cared. Not once. 

And then with the clown - twenty-seven years ago, in this same place - Richie had been the first to attack. Richie had been the one to lead the charge. 

Richie, Eddie had always thought to himself, though he’d never said it, wasn’t afraid of anything.

Eddie had always wished he could be like that. 

Eddie still wishes he could be like that. 

And he had - just for one moment, for one, shining moment -

He remembers launching Bev’s metal spike from the rusted fence outside like a javelin. He remembers hitting It. He remembers Richie falling, landing hard, him landing hard too, as he tore to Richie’s side, desperate to tell him what he’d done, desperate for his approval, and desperate to see his face and his eyes and know he was alright - 

Then the pain. 

He’d been stabbed, he knew. 

Impaled.

Right through the back and into his stomach, a gaping tunnel of collapsing flesh. Static in his head. 

Eddie gags, fighting against the taste of vomit in his throat. The memory of the agony seems to make his current pain worse. 

After that, things are hazier. He remembers being moved, held up, guided through the cave system, though he’s not sure by who. Their voices were heated. The clown, still laughing, still taunting them. 

Choking on his own blood.

He was propped up against a rock - this rock, he thinks, probably - yes, that seems right - and he remembers seeing Richie’s face again, looming out of the dark. Richie saying things to him, reassuring him, his long fingers against Eddie’s cheek. They’d been damp, he thinks, letting his eyes fall shut, probably with blood or dirty sewer water, but they’d been cool, and comfortable even against his sore face, and they’d grounded him, stopped his soul from flying straight up in the air and circling in the dark, like all those missing children...

He’d made a joke, he knows. A dumb, “Your mom” joke. Because at that point, despite Richie’s hands on his face, and the sound of Richie’s voice, and Richie’s leather jacket pressed up against that hole in his stomach, Eddie had known he was going to die and all he could see as the little light there was in the cave faded and his vision began to speckle was Richie’s distraught face, his eyebrows drawn high and his glasses covered in blood, Eddie’s blood, and he couldn’t - he couldn’t die like that, afraid...and if Richie was smiling and laughing everything was okay, everything would be fine, because Richie Tozier wasn’t afraid of a damn thing -

And so he’d made that stupid joke, when all he’d really wanted was to ask Richie to tell him that everything was going to be okay, that he wasn’t about to bleed out and die under that horrible house, in the dirt, cold and shaking on the ground, and if Richie had just smiled at him or cracked a stupid joke back he would have know that everything would be okay…

After that things are dark. 

Eddie forces his eyes back open and tries to sit up again, wincing. 

The pain is still there, but duller. 

The cave is darker now, but there are no more shimmering undulations passing across his field of vision. Things have begun to stabilise. 

It’s dark because the roof caved in. 

The realisation hits him quite suddenly, and with an unexpected rush of strength he pushes himself up into a sitting position, away from the wall, anxious that his friends are trapped somewhere close by and unable to move, unable to get up -

But the dark remains quiet, and still. 

He calls out again - calls out for Richie, and for Bill, and Mike, and Bev, and Ben, calls for them until his throat is raw, but nobody comes. Nobody calls back. 

In the darkness, he remains on his own. 

In another sudden, frightful rush of nausea, Eddie supposes he will have to save himself. 

His body screams in protest, and distantly he hears himself cry out, but somehow he manages to heave himself up onto his knees. His hands scrabble for purchase against one of the dusty boulders beside him, and as he shifts position he feels the dirt cake beneath his fingernails and scrape against his palms. He grimaces, screwing his eyes up tightly against the feeling, against the sharp twinge in his stomach and his back, and the dirt, and the scent of the place, and flexes a foot, forcing himself up. His knees shake and buckle, and he lurches, and grabs wildly for another boulder, a larger, sharper one that hurts to touch, but somehow he manages to stop himself going down, and as he straightens his back, opens his mouth to take a big, gasping breath, he realises he’s standing. 

He’s done it. 

The first step. 

He looks around, straining against the dark to find a way out. 

The cave is unrecognisable now; the clown’s jagged lair is no longer visible, and he cannot see beyond the rocks and stalactites which have plummeted down around him, somehow, miraculously, missing his body whilst he was out cold. 

Or dead. 

Perhaps he is dead, he thinks once again. 

Perhaps this is Hell. 

He swallows down bile, pushing the thought aside. If there’s one thing he is good at doing, it is repressing the shit out of every nasty memory and thought and fear that has ever slipped into his mind. No need to start breaking the habit of a lifetime now that there’s a chance he’s dead, he supposes. 

There’s nothing else to do, so he starts walking. 

It’s slow going at first; the pain throbs, hot and furious each time his feet hit the ground, and he can’t lift his head; he just staggers along, clutching Richie’s ruined leather jacket to himself, breathing hard through his nose and gritting his teeth against the pain. 

Every so often, he trips, or stumbles into another fallen piece of rock, and once or twice he thinks he will fall, but he never does; he somehow manages to keep going, to keep forcing one foot in front of the other. 

After a while, the pain dulls a little more, or at least he imagines that it does. He supposes he has just become accustomed to it. 

He keeps going, counting the paces in his head, building a little rhythm, slow and sluggish, but a rhythm nonetheless. 

_One, two. One, two. _All he has to do is keep it going. _One, two. _

He has not seen the clown again, yet. 

He breathes in hard through his nose, and tries to focus on his own movements; on nothing else. 

After a while he sees what looks like soil beginning to mingle with the dust and rock he is fenced in by; soft, dark dirt, and what looks like dead tree roots. 

Vaguely, he thinks of the nine circles of Hell. He thinks there’s nine, anyway. Or maybe eight? Perhaps he is moving between them.

Regardless, he keeps going. 

He keeps wondering at what point his intestines will finally flop out of the cavity in his stomach, and he will at last succumb to the damage, but nothing ever happens. He thinks about how his mother used to warn him about all the various diseases and injuries one could fall prey to, and how likely those diseases and injuries were to impact upon Eddie, but few of them ever did. He laughs out loud then, delirious, he thinks.

He wonders which circle of Hell his mother is waiting in, and then he feels insanely guilty. 

There’s a noise up ahead suddenly - the first he’s heard in a long, long time, other than his own strained breaths, and the soft tap of his shoes against the ground - and he freezes. 

_Is this it?_ he thinks, _is this where It catches up with me? Is this where I die again?_

He wonders, head spinning, if this is some kind of punishment loop, where he is murdered over and over and over again by that fucking monster. 

He can’t move. He’s so fucking scared. His chest tightens once again. He wants to bend down, make himself a tiny ball, cover his face and press his back to a rock, melt into his body and never be seen again...

Then there’s a voice, a voice he doesn’t recognise, calling, “Is somebody there?” and realistically he _knows _it could be the clown, _knows _he’s going to get himself killed, but suddenly the darkness is swallowing him whole, and the pang of how fucking alone he is hits, and, foolishly, desperately, he calls, “Yes! I’m here! I’m coming! Who’s there?”

He manages a few more hurried steps forwards, tripping over an old rotten branch and a large rock, before there’s another surprised shout, and he rounds a corner, and is suddenly face-to-face with a young man in a ripped bomber jacket, sporting possibly the worst facial bruising and split lip he’s ever seen. 

He yelps, because for one terrible moment, he thinks the leper is back - but then he looks again, and realises - it’s just a man. Just another man. 

The man stares at him, wide-eyed. 

Neither of them says anything. 

Then the man says, “You’re not about to turn into that fucking clown, are you?”

Eddie says, “Holy shit,” because he can’t think of anything else to say. 

The man laughs, disbelieving, a sharp, high, bark of a laugh, and then Eddie laughs too, letting all the air out of his lungs in a _whoosh_, and they stare at one another in the dark and laugh. 

“Fuck,” says the man, “I hope to shit that’s a no.”

“No,” Eddie says, “no,” and then he says, “It stabbed me, though.”

The man says, “Holy fuck,” eyes widening when Eddie points at his stomach, at the large drying bloodstain on his shirt.

Eddie turns, gestures to his back. “It went right through me.” He waits, waits for the gasp from the other man, the confirmation that it is as bad as it feels, that he was fucking _impaled_, and that he’s bleeding out and is going to die.

When he turns back, though, the man is shaking his head. “Doesn’t look so bad at the back. Maybe you hit a rock and cut yourself.” He laughs again. “If it went right through you you’d be dead, right?”

Eddie isn’t so sure, but he supposes this stranger has no reason to lie. Not unless he’s the fucking clown, and if he is, Eddie is dead anyway. Then he thinks, maybe the other man can’t see too well through the darkness. Blood is dark, anyhow. He’s probably missing the extent of Eddie’s injuries. He doesn’t say this, though. 

He looks at the other man, squinting through the black. “What is - did It do that to you?” He gestures towards his face. 

The man’s nose wrinkles. “No,” he says. “Some other fuckers. Ha ha. How lucky am I? It fucking _bit _me, though. What the fuck!” Unprompted, he lifts his shirt. There’s a huge scar spanning from his chest down his side, ending near his hip. Some parts of it are still fresh and glistening. Other parts are raw, but dry, the skin slowly knitting itself back together, leaving only raised strips of jagged red behind. 

Eddie retches. 

“Sorry,” the man says, though he doesn’t look sorry at all. “Guess we’re both pretty fucked-up, huh?”

Eddie says, “Yeah,” because he can’t think of anything else to say. 

The man says, “Where the fuck are we?”

Eddie says, “I think we’re under Neibolt Street. Under the sewers.”

“No kidding,” says the man. “How do you know that?”

“I used to live here,” Eddie says. “I mean - not _here, _here. I didn’t - I didn’t used to live in a sewer. I used to live here, in Derry.” He glances round again, trying to get his bearings, but seeing nothing that looks even slightly like anything he passed or walked through when they came in earlier. Whenever earlier might have been. 

“How long have you been down here?” he asks, and the man just shrugs. 

“Fuck if I know. My phone is dead.” He reaches into his back pocket, pulls it out to show Eddie. 

Eddie doesn’t have his phone with him - there was no point bringing it down the well and into the dark, and anyhow he’d turned it off after Myra had kept calling him incessantly, and he had gotten sick of sending her straight to voicemail - and he isn’t wearing a watch. He wonders if he’s been trapped down here for years, whilst above him all the world rots away. Perhaps that’s where the clown is. 

The other man says, “You know the way out?”

Eddie doesn’t. 

The man shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “Guess we just gotta keep walking, then.” He looks Eddie up and down in a way that makes Eddie somewhat nervous, though he isn’t sure why. “You need a hand?”

“No, thanks.” Even in these dire circumstances, Eddie doesn’t particularly want a stranger touching him.

“Okay.” The man turns away, starts picking his way carefully between the rocks and roots and planks of old, decaying wood that have started to appear around them. 

“How did you get here?” Eddie calls. 

“I, uh, fell in the river,” the man says. “I was drowning, I guess, and It pulled me out. Started fucking - chowing down on me right there and then. Then I guess I passed out. Woke up here, still with most of my skin attached. It doesn’t look as bad as I thought it was, though. I haven’t seen It since then.”

The tight knot in Eddie’s stomach relaxes somewhat. Perhaps the clown really isn’t here. 

The man says, “What about you?”

“Um. I was here with some friends. It attacked us. Then it stabbed me. I blacked out.”

“You and your friends like to hang around in sewers?”

“No, we -” Eddie stops. He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “When I woke up they were gone. I don’t - I don’t know where they are.” His throat feels tight; clogged. He forces himself to breathe; to stare at the other man’s back, rising and falling with the shape of the ground beneath them. He will not be frightened again; not like he was, of the clown and the leper and all the horrible forms it took. Never, he thinks, though he doesn’t believe it, really. Despite what Richie had said to him earlier, Eddie knows he is and always has been a fucking coward.

The man hesitates. He doesn’t look back, but Eddie hears it; the intake of breath. “Maybe we’ll find them, too,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He can feel himself starting to shake. “Maybe.”

They keep moving, through the darkness. Eddie is still afraid; every so often, he feels himself begin to shake, or his chest to constrict. But he keeps his eyes open, and fixed straight ahead, and he refuses to stop, or look around. He can’t do anything about his situation, he tells himself. He just has to keep moving. 

Gradually the rocks fall away and the wood begins to rise, and Eddie begins to spot what looks like old rotten beams, bricks, pieces of stairways. At one point he thinks he sees a metal chair, old and rusted, half-covered with dirt and dust.

“I think,” he says, “I think this is the Well House. I think it’s fallen down.” He looks around. “Are we in a sinkhole?”

The other man says, “Maybe. What’s the Well House?”

Eddie thinks. He doesn’t know what he can say to that question. In the end, he says, “It’s - it’s just a house.”

They walk a little further. It’s still dark all around them, despite the other changes to the scenary. At one point, unprompted, the other man says, “Y’know, my, uh, my boyfriend grew up here too.”

Eddie says, “In the sewers?”

The guy turns around, grinning. He looks weirdly relieved, Eddie thinks. “Ha ha.” He slows, then stops, leaning up against what looks like the side of a huge metal pipe, covered in rust and ancient sewage. Eddie winces. 

The other man says, “This whole town is a sewer.”

Eddie is somewhat inclined to agree. 

They keep moving, keep putting one foot before the other, and as they go, Eddie feels his chest begin to slacken. Breathing is becoming easier. Perhaps they are nearing the surface, he thinks. Come to think of it, his stab wound isn’t hurting quite so much anymore - the one in his stomach, anyway. The one in his cheek is still sore and throbbing. He’s probably got dirt in it, he thinks. It’s probably infected. The thought makes him shudder, and he tries to pick up his pace, to get out of here faster. Wherever _here _is. 

He wants to ask the other man if he thinks he’s dead; if he thinks this is hell, or some weird kind of purgatory thing. That would make him sound crazy, though. 

Maybe he is crazy. Maybe none of this is real and any second he is going to wake up in a padded room, arms strapped around himself in a big X. 

The other man says, “Hey, you might think I’m fucking crazy, but do you think this is real?”

Eddie starts. “What?” he says. 

The man glances back at him, laughs, awkwardly. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just - weird. None of this feels real. I mean - I got half-eaten by a clown.”

Eddie says, “Yeah. I mean - to be honest, I was kind of thinking the same thing.” His chest feels a little lighter after this confession. He thinks about telling the other man his suspicion that they are burning in a pit of damnation, but he doesn’t say anything more. He just keeps walking, holding his stomach, keeping his thoughts to himself in the quiet dark. 

They might have walked for minutes, or hours, or days. Eddie doesn’t know. There’s no way of telling. The whole time he is waiting for the clown to come back; waiting for the leper to rear up again before him, hissing and groaning, tongue extended.

But nothing happens. 

The air remains still and quiet. 

They just walk on. 

They slide past a boulder, unsteady on their feet, and the other man looks back at him. Eddie supposes he should ask him his name. He doesn’t say anything. 

“Hey,” says the other guy, “you think we’ve been walking in circles?”

Eddie says, “I don’t know.” He looks around. He feels like he doesn’t know anything anymore. Everything has changed, over the past few days. Everything has come spewing back up. His childhood. His friends. The clown. That terrifying discomfort, the notion that he might be unhappy; that something is wrong; that he is being lied to. The idea that things are not real; are not as they seem. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a damn thing. 

He thinks he might be about to cry; be about to start fucking bawling in front of this goddamn stranger. He looks around instead, at the caves, peering through the darkness.

He hates this. He’s sick of this, of the dark and the walking and the pain in his stomach. He’s done; he’s done with it; with all of it. 

He says, “I hate this,” out loud, and when he turns back to his companion, the other man is gone; just a shadow, further away than Eddie thought he was. 

The other man says, “What?”

“I hate it,” Eddie says, and he looks up at where the roof of the cave should be, where the sky should be, and he knows the town he grew up in and ran from and forgot and ran back to is somewhere above him, somewhere just out of reach. “Derry may be a fucking sewer, but it’s gotta be better than this place. I’m sick of this. I wanna get out. I wanna get out.” And then, for a reason he doesn’t quite know, he says, “I wanna live.”

And then he blinks, and the darkness is swallowing itself, and the world is turning and twisting and crunching around him.

Eddie opens his eyes, and he is standing in the dry grass in the place where the Well House used to be, clutching Richie’s bloody jacket, and the moon is above him. 

There is nobody else around. Eddie turns, slowly. Looks up and down Neibolt Street.

He still might be dead, he supposes; but he doesn’t think so. 

Not this time. 

In the distance, he hears the sounds of life; of a dog barking; traffic; crickets.

There is a world around him.

Eddie turns his face towards the stars.

He turns the jacket over in his hands.

He starts to walk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> richie's mcdonalds drive-thru story is of course straight up stolen from john mulaney as we have as a fandom seeingly decided thats who richie would be, post coming-out. you can watch the story here: https://youtu.be/PTf3gqDcaM0
> 
> cumlord the dog is of course cumlord_official on instagram. hes a sweet baby angel.


	2. one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been staring at this for so long i genuinely don't know if its any good or not sorry

Richie sleeps fitfully. 

He wakes up when somebody slams a door in the hotel two floors below him; wakes up when the pipes in the wall behind his bed start to gurgle as somebody somewhere takes a shower, or uses the sink, or the toilet; wakes up _again_, sweaty and shouting from dreams of a body above him, a cry of pain, the spray of blood on his glasses, clowns and giant Paul Bunyan statues come to life and dismembered legs and -

Each time, he’s almost okay for one second, then it hits him like a freight train, that Eddie is dead. Eddie is gone. 

Each time he sinks back into the pillows behind him and cries.

Eddie is dead, Eddie is gone, buried beneath the ground on Neibolt Street, alone in the dark, and Eddie is not coming back, ever. 

Each time he cries himself to sleep, and each time he closes his eyes he begs whatever fucking entity is lurking out there in the night that he won’t ever open them again. 

He feels sick with it - with the loss and the horror and the utter anguish he didn’t think it was possible to feel, until now. A couple of times, he jerks up in bed, retching, certain he is going to throw up, but he doesn’t. He can’t. 

He isn’t sure how long it is since he last ate. He doesn’t remember. 

He doesn’t remember what time they got back to the hotel, either, or what day it was, but every time he wakes up it is dark. 

He doesn’t remember a night ever passing as slowly as this one. 

He cannot even begin to imagine what it will be like to live like this; to try to keep going in a world in which Eddie Kaspbrak is no longer there. 

_You did it before_, his evil, disgusting brain tells him. _You forgot all about him._

And for one awful moment, Richie wishes he could do it all over again; wishes he could leave town and that the memories could fade and he could lapse back into blissful ignorance.

He doesn’t think he will though. Not now the clown is dead.

They killed the motherfucker, and now they have to live with the consequences. 

Eddie died because of _him_.

Richie replays the moments in his head, the last of Eddie’s life - of how he had come barreling out of one of those tunnels in the caves to see Mike lifted high in the air - how he had yelled at It - how It had grabbed him -

The Deadlights. 

Richie tries not to think about that part. He is certain that if he thinks about it any more, it will surely break him. 

And then Eddie - the next thing he’d seen had been Eddie, hovering above him in the way he hadn’t been able to stop imagining since he’d laid eyes on him again that evening in the restaurant, and had thought about as a teen too, alone in his bed at night, scared out of his mind of what the other kids would think if they knew how he felt about boys, how he felt about Eddie…

Eddie had attacked It. Eddie had attacked It for _him_. Eddie had run to him, grabbed him, babbled to him about how he’d got It, he thought he’d got It, he thought he’d _killed _It - 

He can’t shake the image of what had come next. 

He hadn’t thought it was real at first. It _couldn’t _have been real, of course not, not Eddie, not _Eddie _\- 

But it was real. Eddie had been stabbed. Gutted like a fish. 

Eddie had died down there, beneath this fucking rotten town.

Eddie is still down there, decaying. 

Richie had wanted to stay and rot with him too; to let the roof cave in on the both of them, burying him alive with Eddie, his Eddie…

He gasps in a breath. 

He can’t think about it anymore - Eddie down there, alone and bloodied and bruised and trapped in the darkness. He can’t stop thinking of how horrific his last moments must have been, whilst just a few feet away Richie and their friends had fought It, backs to him, slowly dying alone in the dirt and the dark of the place he hated most.

It’s wrong, Richie keeps thinking, it’s _wrong_.

He doesn’t actually realise he’s getting up and out of bed until he’s on his feet, halfway across the hotel room. 

He’s still dressed, still in clothes made grey-brown by the quarry water.

It doesn’t matter; not where he’s going. 

The house may have collapsed, but Eddie is still there, he knows, somewhere beneath the rubble and the wreckage, still holding Richie’s jacket against his stomach in a pathetic attempt to keep the life from spilling out of him. 

Richie can’t leave him. He can’t. Not again.

He feels like he’s not really inside his body; it’s like he’s watching TV, or wearing a VR headset as he heads towards the door. He feels like there’s cotton wool inside his ears. He feels like he’s watching himself do this, with no mental input, and he wonders if this is how things are going to be from now on. 

He’s not even sure what he’ll do when he finds Eddie; whether he’s going to pick him up and bring him back here to the others, or lie down in the debris and die alongside him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. 

He opens the door to his room, barely feeling the cold of the doorknob against his grubby palm, and steps out into the hallway.

He turns towards the stairs. 

He freezes. 

Eddie is there. 

_Eddie is there. _

He feels the bile rise in his throat again, but it feels like his whole body has shut down. He is unable to move. He doesn’t throw up. Doesn’t even choke on it. 

Eddie is stood at the top of the staircase, holding Richie’s jacket, one hand on the bannister, frozen with one foot on the top step, one on the landing. 

Eddie sees him. His eyes go wide. He says, “Richie!”

Richie is shaking. He doesn’t think he’s ever shaken so violently in his life. 

This isn’t real. This can’t be real. 

He feels like he’s back in the sewers again. 

This is a dream; a hallucination. 

This isn’t Eddie. 

It can’t be Eddie, it _can’t _be, Eddie is _dead_, and he knows that, and he _knows _this is the fucking clown again, that they hadn’t really killed It, that this is one final punch in the gut before It finishes what it started with Stan and with Eddie, and kills them all here and now in this fucking miserable Derry bed and breakfast, but he’s still croaking out Eddie’s name, and walking towards him, and extending his arms, and grabbing hold of him, and pulling him into his chest -

He hears himself, as though from a great distance, saying, “This isn’t real, you’re not Eddie, you’re not Eddie,” and he can feel wet on his cheeks and taste salt on his tongue, but he’s still holding onto not-Eddie like a vice, shaking and breathing in the scent of his hair, almost lost underneath the smell of the dirty water of the town they both hate so much, half-blind and all-desperate, needing nothing more than this one last moment with Eddie even if it’s not real, even if it’s all about to end in a stab to the gullet or razor teeth in his jugular, at least he can have this, and then he can be with Eddie, the real Eddie -

Only it’s not ending, and Eddie is hugging him back.

Eddie is still there, in his arms. Eddie is not growing paler, and his hair is not growing up and out and longer and turning orange, and he is not bursting out of his cracked and mottled skin, mouth wide and mad and laughing at Richie’s desperation and stupidity - 

The clown is still nowhere to be seen.

Still swimming in and swirling out of his own brain, Richie becomes vaguely aware that he is crying, that he is still telling Eddie that he isn’t real, and that one of Eddie’s hands is in his hair, and that the other is on his back. He tries to look at Eddie, tries to see for certain if his eyes are yellow or his teeth are too long or too sharp, and through the tears and the crack in his glasses - the crack where Eddie’s blood had pooled and gathered - he can barely see. But he can see Eddie. And he knows him. He _knows_.

He would know him at the end of everything.

He’s still saying it, though - still saying “it’s not you, it’s not real,” like he’s flying on autopilot, until Eddie curls his fingers in his hair, tugs him back, looks him in the eyes and says, “It _is _me, Rich,” and he realises that Eddie is crying too, and they are both staring at one another, sobbing, open-mouthed, and then Richie feels his knees finally give out and he sinks down, down onto the ugly hotel-carpet floor, and Eddie sinks with him, still holding onto him, until they’re sat on the floor, still crying, still clutching at one another, and Eddie is whispering, “it is me, it is me,” and Richie doesn’t know which way is up anymore. 

Somewhere down the hallway a door opens, and there are footsteps, but Richie can’t look up - can’t think of a single thing other than the feel of Eddie in his arms, holding onto him, his head pressed against Richie’s shoulder, warm and present - then there’s a _thud, _and a “What the fuck?” and an “_Eddie?”_

Mike is there, all of a sudden, Bill right behind him, and the scent of whiskey is in the air - somebody dropped a glass on the floor behind him, he realises, tripping over his own confused and stumbling thoughts - and Eddie says, “Mike,” and then Bill is yelling, lunging at them, screaming that it’s not real, it’s not Eddie, and Richie needs to tell him, needs to make him understand that it _is _Eddie, that he came back for him, that the clown is dead and Eddie is here, but he is out of his body, flying somewhere near the ceiling, circling one of the dusty yellow light bulbs, and he can’t make his mouth work. 

Mike has grabbed Bill, and is holding him back by the waist, shouting Bill’s name, and Eddie is frozen against him, unmoving, and all Richie can think is that Bill is going to kill Eddie if he breaks free - 

There’s more thudding on the stairs behind them, and then a woman is screaming, and somewhere else in the hotel somebody is yelling _shut the fuck up_, and Ben is sprinting out of nowhere and wrapping his arms around Mike and Bill, and Eddie is breathing fast and shallow right in his ear. 

Bill is still screaming that it’s not Eddie, it’s not fucking Eddie, going absolutely batshit crazy against Mike and Ben’s grip, and it takes Richie a moment to realise that he’s screaming back, screaming that it _is _Eddie, it is, Bill, it’s Eddie, and Eddie is holding onto him so tightly Richie thinks he might cut his circulation off -

Another door further down the corridor flies open and the elderly woman who Richie vaguely registers in some deep recess of his mind as the person who checked him in at the front desk a couple of days back emerges, and somehow over Bill and Richie’s yelling, manages to make herself heard.

“I will have to ask you to leave,” she’s saying, “and I will call the police.”

“Bill!” Bev says, and Bill stops screeching, though he’s still staring at Eddie, wide-eyed and rabid. 

Bev crouches down next to Eddie. Richie has no idea where she came from. Everything is happening so fast.

Eddie, still hunched up against Richie’s side, wild-eyed, turns to look at her.

“Eddie…” she says, and Eddie, as though a spell has been broken, says, “Bev, Bev, it’s me, I promise, it’s me -”

Bev, staring at him, eyes wide, says, “I - I know - I know, honey,” and Richie feels Eddie sag with relief in his arms. 

Above them, Mike is saying, “We’re - we’re so sorry. We’ll be quiet. I’m sorry -”

“One more noise,” the woman says warningly, and turns, and marches back down the corridor at a surprising pace for such an elderly lady.

Ben, still holding onto Bill, nods his head. “Come on,” he says, and together, he and Mike navigate their way back into Richie’s room, Bill suddenly hunched and pliant between them. 

Bev says, “Richie...Eddie...,” and takes both their hands, and hauls them up as though they weigh no more than they did as children.

Eddie is still shaking as they move out of the hallway. Richie can’t let go of him - despite his conviction, he keeps thinking, _this isn’t real_, and he is so certain that as soon as he lets the other man go he will crumble and vanish, and Richie will be alone once more. But Eddie doesn’t seem to want to let go either - he presses into Richie’s side, and when they’re in Richie’s room and the door is shut, he stays beside him, back to the wall, watching Bill like he’s a wild animal. Richie is reminded of how he was in the Well House, before, how he froze up and his eyes glazed over like he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.

Richie says, “It’s Eddie, guys. It’s really Eddie.” He’s out of breath, like he’s just run a marathon. 

Bill says, “No,” shakes his head, but Richie can’t let him finish, _needs _to make him understand.

“It’s Eddie,” he says again, “Bev, tell them, it _is _Eddie.”

Bev says, hesitantly, “the clown’s dead, Bill -”

Bill says, “So is Georgie! But It still brought him back - made me think -”

Eddie says, “Bill, it’s me,” and his voice is smaller and softer than Richie has heard in a long time; he sounds like he’s thirteen again, frightened of his mom and germs and the boys who are bigger than him and fucking _lepers_, of all things, what thirteen-year-old is afraid of _lepers_?

“No!” Bill roars, and Eddie physically recoils, breath rattling loudly in his chest. But then Bill starts to shake, and then he begins to sink down, and together, Mike and Ben guide him to the bed. He doesn’t try and stand up - just puts his head in his hands. Mike sits down next to him; places a hand on his shoulder.

Ben stands, looks back at Eddie. He says, “Eddie, how - we saw you die.”

Richie can still feel Eddie trembling at his side. But Ben isn’t mad or riled up, and with Bill sitting down now, no longer yelling at him, he seems a little less afraid. He says, “I know. I thought I died. Maybe - maybe I did die, I don’t know. But then I opened my eyes and I _wasn’t _dead. I don’t know what to say.” Richie sees the way his gaze keeps flickering back to Bill, and he knows intuitively that Eddie wants to ask Bill if he’s mad at him, to beg him not to be. That’s just how Eddie is; how he’s always been. As much as he ran his mouth with the rest of the Losers as kids, if someone got genuinely mad at him, Eddie would backpedal frantically, desperately try to salvage the situation, make himself small and meek and beg with his eyes to be left unhurt. 

Ben says, “You - you were _impaled, _Eddie.”

Richie flinches. 

Eddie says, “Look,” and he lifts his shirt up. There’s a dark, fresh wound on his stomach, but it’s not bleeding - just beginning to scar. He turns, and there’s a mark on his back too, where the clown’s razor-sharp leg had sunk into him only a few hours previously. But this mark is fading, too, the tissue beginning to knot and knit together in tight little wrinkles. 

Nobody says anything. Then, hesitatingly, Bev says, “When I saw - when I saw..._It_ at my old apartment, It told me that nobody who dies in Derry ever really dies.”

Bill, looking up sharply from the bed, says “Oh, so we’re listening to whatever sh-shit the cannibal clown from outer space has to say now?”

“Bill,” Mike says.

Bev says, “It also...magicked up the whole apartment block. When I arrived there, everything looked like it did when we were kids, I mean - the whole building looked fine. When I left, I turned round and it - it was derelict. The whole thing. I don’t know what the hell I was doing while I was inside there - if I was just wandering around in the dark. But It created all that. Maybe…” she hesitates. “Maybe it just made us _think _we saw Eddie die. Maybe that wasn’t real either.”

Bill groans, dropping his face into his palms once again.

Eddie says, voice soft, “I don’t - I know I was stabbed. You saw the scars.”

They all look at each other. 

Mike says, “When - when we were back at the quarry...Bill, you said you saw a shooting star. I didn’t see it, but...just at that moment, I was thinking - I was wishing we got a better ending.”

Bill says, “Are you serious? A shooting star, Mike? Wishes don’t f-fucking come true. They -”

“Apparently they do,” Bev says, and she’s looking at Eddie. 

Bill stares at her. “Ben,” he says, weakly, “Ben -”

“The scars,” Richie says, suddenly remembering. “The scars on our hands, they’re gone. If It wasn’t dead, why would the scars have gone?”

Reflexively, they all look down at their hands. Richie feels Eddie twitch against his side when he sees the mark has disappeared. He turns to look at him. The gauze on his cheek is hanging off - probably knocked askew by Richie’s eager arms - and he sees that beneath it, the skin is rejoined, only the faintest line remaining. It has healed far faster than an injury like that should have done.

They’re all quiet for a moment. Then Bill says, “I just - It could have done that too. This could all be a trick. You know how powerful It is. It - It loves to play games -” He gestures at Eddie. “_If _\- _if _this is all real, and this is really Eddie, how do we know...how do we know everything won’t go to shit tomorrow morning? How do we know It’s really gone? We thought we saw It die before. W-we could get up tomorrow and Eddie could be dead on the floor again -”

“Bill!” Richie says.

“I’m sorry, I just…” Bill trails off, puts his head in his hands once more. His voice is exhausted. “I’m sorry. I just find it hard to believe…in Derry...” He doesn’t finish. 

It doesn’t matter. Richie knows what he was going to say. 

_I just find it hard to believe that good things could happen in Derry._

*

Eddie wants to shower. 

He refuses point-blank to go back up to his room, and Richie knows it’s because he’s thinking of the blood on the bathroom floor. 

There’s always a chance it’s been cleaned up, by the old lady who apparently runs the Townhouse, or the maid, if there is one - mistaken for a shaving accident, or a fall - but none of them know for sure, and nobody is particularly enthusiastic about finding out.

So Eddie goes to shower in Richie’s bathroom, and the rest of them sit around in silence and wait for him to emerge.

It feels surreal - it feels like an insane set of actions to undertake after someone has just returned, seemingly from the dead. Taking a shower. Sitting together with your childhood friends in a crappy hotel room. 

Bill doesn’t speak. He’s still covering his face with his hands, bent at the middle, sitting beside Mike on Richie’s damp bed.

Ben paces the room slowly, back and forth, from the door leading into the bathroom, to the bed, to the door out onto the hallway, and back again. Nobody tells him to stop. 

Richie and Bev sit side-by-side on the carpet, pressed against the wall. Richie is fucking exhausted. He doesn’t know if any of the others have slept - hell, he still has no clue what fucking time it is - but he won’t let himself go to sleep. Every few seconds, he feels his eyelids get heavy, and his head begin to nod, and every time he jerks his chin up, setting his jaw against the pull of letting himself just drift away and rest. He can’t. He is terrified that if he goes to sleep, that will be it. Everything will be over. He’s still not convinced that any of this is real, despite his insistence to Bill that Eddie really is back and that he really is Eddie - and he can’t help the creeping fear that has settled in the pit of his stomach which tells him that when he wakes up, he will be back in his bed, fully clothed and filthy, and Eddie will still be gone. Still under the earth, under the house on Neibolt Street, and there’s not one goddamn thing he will be able to do about it. So he fixes his gaze straight ahead, and opens his eyes wide, and waits, listening to the spray of water in the bathroom.

Bev nudges him. It takes a moment for the feeling to register, given how hard he’s focusing on the sound of the shower and on keeping his eyes open. 

He turns to look at her. “What?” he says. 

She looks back at him, carefully. “You okay?” she whispers. 

Richie doesn’t even know how to begin answering that question. “No,” he says.

She looks at him a moment longer, then signs, and leans sideways until she’s resting her head on his left shoulder. 

Mike says, from Richie’s bed, “Anyone else feel like we should be - I don’t know - drinking? Celebrating?”

“We should feel like that,” Ben says. He’s stopped pacing and is now chewing the skin around his nails. 

They’re all quiet, all absorbing their own devastation; the sense that the world has, yet again, been tipped upside-down. That things aren’t real. That any second they could look down and see the sky, or into a mirror and see nothing, or at a clock, and wake up, because clocks don’t exist in dreams. 

Richie starts. “What time is it?” he says. 

Ben checks his phone. “It’s almost three,” he says.

Richie says, “Can I see?” because he needs to know, needs to be sure this isn’t all in his head. 

Ben frowns, but he doesn’t question it, moving across the room and holding his phone out to Richie. Two fifty-one. The screen is cracked - probably from the fight, or the flight, or just from life; perhaps Ben dropped it once, rushing for a cab, or out on a run - and Richie tells himself, _that means this is all real; that’s not the kind of detail you think of in a dream. _

He doesn’t tell the others that, though. 

“Thanks,” he says. 

Bill hasn’t said anything for a while. He’s still sitting next to Mike, motionless. He looks more exhausted than Richie’s ever seen a person. 

He thinks about what Bill had said - about Georgie - and he can’t even bring himself to care. It’s selfish, he knows, but his head is just one buzzing loop of _Eddie Eddie Eddie_, and he thinks that this probably makes him a bad friend to Bill, but still. Eddie. Eddie. _Eddie_. 

As though he’s been summoned, the door to the en-suite opens and Eddie appears, wearing nothing but a towel. His scar is shining in the centre of his stomach, pink and angry and wet. Richie can’t look away. 

Eddie says, “Richie, I need some clothes.”

Richie says, “Uh.”

Ben points at Richie’s bag, still mostly packed, because Richie never bothers to unpack when he’s travelling - he just lets things slip out and slowly cover the floor, then loses them at a later date and has to buy brand new stuff. “That’s yours, right, Rich?” he says, as thought there might be someone else staying in this room to whom it belongs.

Richie manages a, “Yes.”

Eddie bends over, wincing - presumably at the tug of his sensitive, healing skin - and begins sorting through Richie’s stuff. “Is this all you brought?” he says.

Recovering, Richie says, “We don’t all travel with three suitcases full of satin underwear and a separate makeup bag, Eduardo.”

Scowling, Eddie says, “It was two suitcases, dick. And what the hell are you talking about, satin underwear?” He finally selects a t-shirt that is apparently satisfactory, along with a pair of Richie’s boxers, which sends Richie’s brain back into meltdown mode, because it would seem that having the love of your life murdered in front of you, killing both your childhood tormentor and a demonic alien clown, and _then _having said lifelong love brought mysteriously back into the realm of the living all in the same twenty-four hour span isn’t enough to dull his thirst.

Meanwhile, Eddie has disappeared back into the bathroom.

Mike shifts where he is sitting. “It’s late,” he says. “Perhaps we should go to bed. We can talk in the morning. Figure out...stuff.” He looks at the bathroom door as he says this, and it pisses Richie off, because there’s nothing to figure out; Eddie’s back and of _course _it’s him, he knows it’s Eddie, who gives a fuck _how _it is?

He doesn’t say any of this, though. Just nods - stares back down at the strip of carpet between the sides of his feet. 

Mike stands up. “I should probably get going,” he says. “Bill - you gonna be okay?”

Bill nods, sits up, rubs his face with one hand. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I…” then he trails off, and doesn’t say anything more. 

Mike says, “Come on. I’ll help you back to your room.”

Bill says, “I don’t need help,” but Mike just says, “Yeah, yeah,” and guides him to his feet. 

“See you in the morning, guys,” he says. “Let’s get breakfast.”

To Richie it sounds like the craziest thing he’s ever heard anyone say. He wants to laugh. He doesn’t.

Mike and Bill leave.

Eddie emerges again, now wearing Richie’s shirt and underwear. In the low light of the hotel room, he doesn’t look real. 

Richie thinks he might cry. 

At his side, Bev shifts her weight, and stands. 

“I guess I’ll go to bed, too,” she says. “We should all go to bed,” and Ben, looking at her, says, “Our own beds,” which is weird, but Richie can’t focus on that right now. 

Bev says, “Eddie - what are you gonna do? We can - we can come and take a look in your room with you, if you want?” She gestures at Ben, who seems even less thrilled by the suggestion than she does. 

Eddie pulls a face. “I,” he says, “I can’t - I can’t -”

“You can stay here,” Richie says, probably a little too quickly. 

Eddie turns to look at him, surprised. “Um,” he says. “Thanks. But - do you really wanna sleep up there?”

“I wasn’t offering to take your room, asshole!”

“Alright,” Ben says hastily, as Eddie opens his mouth, apparently gearing up for an argument. “Alright. Richie’ll sleep on the floor, right Richie?”

“Dude, this is my room.”

Bev says, “Eddie got _stabbed_ today.”

“Look,” Ben says, “if it’s that big of a deal, _I’ll _sleep on the floor and Eddie can have my bed -”

Eddie says, “It’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t - I don’t wanna sleep, anyway.”

They all look at him. 

Eddie says, “I feel like I’ve been asleep for like - twenty years.”

Privately, Richie feels the same. Metaphorically, anyway. Literally speaking, he is tired enough that he could probably sleep on the floor, with ease. He could sleep standing up, he thinks. 

Bev looks like _she’s _going to argue with Eddie, then, so Richie just says, “It’s okay, guys. We’ll - we’ll figure it out. Just - you guys go.”

Ben and Bev look at him carefully for a moment - then at each other - then, finally, they go. 

At the door, Ben says, “If you need anything -”

Richie says, “Yeah, I know.”

At last, they leave. Richie locks the door behind them. He turns around.

They’re alone. 

Eddie is stood at the foot of the bed, fingers pressed to his mouth. He looks spaced-out, Richie thinks. He could probably clap his hands in front of him and it wouldn’t even register on Eddie’s radar.

He waits a moment. Then he says, “Hey. You okay?”

Eddie’s eyes slide sideways. He meets Richie’s gaze. Then he lowers his hands. “I don’t know,” he says.

Richie knows how that feels. “Look, man,” he says, “Did you mean what you said about not wanting to sleep? ‘Cause, honestly, I don’t care about sleeping on the floor. I’m about to pass the fuck out. You can take the bed.”

Eddie takes a step hesitantly towards the bed. “These sheets are filthy,” he says. “What the fuck, were you laying in bed wearing your shoes or something?”

Richie says, “Y’know, you’re being awful picky for someone who doesn’t have a bed right now.”

Eddie says, “I can’t believe you want me to sleep in that thing. I may as well go lay down in the street outside -”

“Oh, my God,” Richie says. “Do you need me to go find you some new sheets? Do I have to find an all-night Target? Do I have to go knock on the door of every room in this fucking place until I can find someone willing to donate _their _sheets to a worthy cause?” He mimes rattling a cup. “Spare sheets, sir; spare -”

“You are so _fucking _annoying.”

Richie strides to the bed, begins wrestling the duvet from its cover. 

Eddie watches him, arms folded. 

“There. Does that satisfy his lordship?”

Eddie peers at the bed. “Not really. The duvet’s still wet, jackass.”

“Only the top!” Richie runs his hand across the top sheet, between the mattress and the duvet. 

For a moment, he thinks Eddie will insist that he will _not _accept that, and demand that he go source new bed clothes from somewhere, because that’s the kind of freak he is. But Eddie just sighs, like he’s been terribly hard done by, and sits down on the edge of the bed. 

Richie watches him. Eddie doesn’t do anything. He just sits there, arms still crossed. 

Slowly, tentatively, Richie sits down by his side, leaving plenty of space between them. Then he starts to laugh. 

Eddie jerks in surprise. 

Richie laughs and laughs. 

“What’s so funny, asshole?”

“You literally - came back from the dead, and the first thing you wanna do is argue about bed sheets,” Richie says. 

Eddie stares at him a moment. Then he laughs too, tiredly, covering his eyes with his hand. 

“Oh my god, Rich,” he says. “Oh, my god.”

Richie says, “We fucking...we killed a killer clown today. From outer space.”

Eddie looks up at him. “You - you really got It, then?”

“Yeah. I think so. We like, pulled Its heart out and everything.”

Eddie says, “You _what?_”

“Yeah, dude. It was pretty gross. You would have had a breakdown.”

Eddie says, “I feel like I’m having a breakdown. I’m going to need so many fucking anti-psychotics after this.” He falls quiet, stares into the middle distance for a moment. “I thought I was hallucinating, earlier. Or dreaming. Or - no, I didn’t even think that, my mind just went straight to _I died and now I’m in hell_.” He pauses, hesitating, Richie thinks. “I don’t know what happened.”

Richie isn’t sure he wants to know what happened. All he cares about is that Eddie is safe, and solid, and real at his side, his hair damp and curling slightly after his shower, and just one drop of moisture clinging to his dark eyelashes. He can’t look away. 

Eddie shifts his weight a little, drawing his toes backward, crossing his feet at the ankles. “When I - woke up, I was in the dark. The cave had collapsed. The roof had fallen in. And when I got out the Well House was gone. It was like it had all just fallen into the earth.” He frowns. “I don’t even know how I got out.”

Richie remembers. He remembers being dragged from the tunnels, fighting against the arms around him, wanting nothing more than to get back to Eddie’s body, to curl up at his side, to lay in the dark forever with him beneath the rocks. He remembers the light outside burning his eyes; seeing the house collapse. Knowing that was it. That was the end.

He says, “Yeah. That happened.” He can’t look away from Eddie. He’s convinced that if he does, he’ll vanish. 

Eddie says, “So it was...it was real then. What I remember.” 

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. He isn’t sure if Eddie wants it to be real or not; if Eddie would rather think his stab wound was a misdiagnosis and all his friends left him behind, or if he did bleed out and die and come back to life in the lair of the clown.

Richie knows what he believes. He doesn’t know which idea makes him sicker. He says, “Eds, if I’d - I didn’t wanna leave you. I was - I couldn’t -” his voice cracks. He can’t say anything else. 

Eddie turns to look at him. He looks surprised. 

Richie says, “They made me leave. The whole place was collapsing. I tried to go back in for you. I wanted to - I…” He trails off. He doesn’t know what he’d wanted to do. “I can’t - Eds, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t - I didn’t wanna leave you there. I was so - I fucking - I’ll never forgive myself -”

“Richie,” Eddie turns to him. He looks a little unnerved by Richie’s sudden display of emotion, but he’s not pulling away, not deflecting. He’s so fucking wonderful, Richie can hardly breathe. “Rich, it - it doesn’t matter. I’m here now. I’m _here_.” His face assumes a slow expression of wonder. “I...I got myself out.”

“Yeah, you did.” Richie wipes at the corner of his eyes, jostling his glasses. “You were so fucking brave.”

Eddie actually looks embarrassed, but he’s smiling, still, which is the important thing. He looks away from Richie, down at his knees. 

He says, “Do - do you think I really died down there?”

Richie really doesn’t know what to say to that. He says, “I don’t know.” But he knows. He knows that after they’d killed the clown, when he’d run back to Eddie’s side, he’d been still, unbreathing, cooling. 

His body had been limp and heavy and lifeless when Richie had pulled him into his arms. 

The memory sickens him. It makes his stomach cold and tight. 

Richie wants to hold him again; to know that this time he is warm and moving and that when they press their bodies close he will be able to feel the rise and fall of Eddie’s chest; the whisper of air against his skin; the dull thud of his pulse. 

But he can’t. He can’t ask for that. 

“Hey,” Eddie says, and it startles him; jolts him inside his own head. “Are you okay, man?”

Richie blinks. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Of course he’s fine. He just got Eddie back. 

Eddie is staring at him, somewhat cautiously, Richie thinks. “Are you sure? You look like shit. And - and you zoned out on me there a moment.”

Richie says, “Oh.” He doesn’t know what else to say. He’s exhausted, still, but he doesn’t want to sleep. Can’t bear the thought. He needs to stay awake; to watch over Eddie, to know that he’s really there and that he’s staying. “I’m fine,” he says again. 

Eddie looks at him a moment longer with his wide brown eyes, then drops his gaze to the bed. “Are you not gonna get changed?” he says, after a moment. “‘Cause, no offence, but you fucking stink, man.”

“Hey!”

“Seriously, have you just been laying in bed in these fucking things all evening?”

Eddie pinches the sleeve of Richie’s shirt between his forefinger and thumb, grimacing, and Richie wants to say, _Yes, yes I have, because I lost my fucking mind when I saw you butchered right in front of me and had to leave you behind in the sewers and also I’ve been in love with you since I was a little kid and never got to tell you that and honestly I think I still might be -_

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say a damn thing. 

Instead, he gets up. 

“Fine,” he says, “I’ll take a shower for you, Eddie my love. But just so you know -” he leans into Eddie’s space, flicks him on the nose - “your mom loved it when I was dirty.”

Eddie’s yell of “You are _so _not funny, Richie!” follows him into the bathroom and bounces between the tiles. 

*

Richie showers so fucking fast it’s hardly worth it. He wants to call out to Eddie the entire time he’s in the bathroom, just to be sure he’s still there, that this isn’t some god awful cosmic trick, that it isn’t a trauma-induced hallucination, but whenever he opens his mouth, the words get stuck. 

He isn’t about to start yelling at Eddie from the bathroom like some kind of fucking weirdo. 

Besides, if he listens closely, he can hear Eddie puttering around the room - the floorboards creaking every so often, the sound of a window being closed. At one point he hears the TV being switched on, then the volume instantly muted. 

Still, he doesn’t even bother drying off before throwing his underwear on - clean underwear this time - and the faded green t-shirt he’s taken to sleeping in after he spilled laundry detergent on it and it ended up with pale splash marks dotting the hem. 

When he opens the bathroom door, chest tight, Eddie is still there. He’s sitting on the bed, looking out of the window. 

“Hey,” he says, twisting at the waist. “You should, um, sleep. I’ll just -” he looks at Richie properly, narrowing his eyes. “Does that shirt say _roach of the week?”_

Richie glances down at himself. There’s a big picture of a cockroach right in the middle of his chest. He doesn’t remember where he got the shirt - probably some thrift store back in LA - but he remembers thinking it was hilarious. “Yeah.”

Eddie looks caught halfway between laughter and bemusement. He’s still just as fucking cute as he was as a kid, Richie thinks. “Okay,” he says, “whatever. I’m not gonna ask.” He shifts towards the end of the bed, leaving as much space for Richie as he possibly can. “You can sleep,” he says. “I’m just gonna…” he trails off. “I don’t want to.”

Richie says, “Well if you’re not sleeping, I’m not sleeping either.”

Eddie says, “Richie, you said you were about to pass out, and you look like crap. Go the fuck to sleep.”

Richie decides he will get into bed, just to placate Eddie, but he won’t sleep. He’ll stay awake and keep an eye on the other man. Just to be sure. Just to be sure. He slides beneath the covers, lays back, trying not to focus on the weight of Eddie at the end of the bed, the warmth of him through the blankets, the way his face looks softer and younger in the dim half-light cast by the shitty old lamp on the nightstand.

He says, “Aren’t you tired?”

Eddie looks back at him, slowly. His face is pinched again, anxious. He says, “I don’t know.” He pauses, glances back at the window. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. You ever feel like you’re on _The Truman Show?”_

Richie says, “Kind of.” He doesn’t think the analogy’s quite right, but it’s close enough. Nothing they’ve experienced over the past few days has made sense. He doesn’t suppose anything that’s happened in Derry - ever since that thing arrived - has made sense. 

He’s so tired. He closes his eyes. He’ll be okay if he closes his eyes, as long as he can stay awake. He listens to the sounds of Eddie breathing at the end of the bed; feels the weight of him shift every time he moves. 

Eddie says, “Do you think we’ll forget? This time?”

Richie isn’t sure. He’s hardly considered it himself. Before they’d killed the clown he’d just assumed he was going to end up dead either way, so it didn’t really matter. Then afterwards he hadn’t exactly been in the right frame of mind to consider things like that. 

He says, honestly, “I don’t know, Eds.”

They’re silent for a moment. Then Eddie says, “I don’t know which is worse. Forgetting all this shit but forgetting you too - all of you - or remembering and having to live with the knowledge that there are things out there like - like Pennywise.”

Richie knows which option he would take, any day. Or at least, which option he would take with Eddie alive. Now he’s been reunited with his friends, he doesn’t think he wants to go back to how things were before. The inertia. The great black blocks of unexplained amnesia cutting him off from the cause and effect reasoning for his fears, his habits, his behaviours, developed in that dark, long-lost pit of childhood he now feels somewhat prepared to excavate. Perhaps it’s because of his friends he now feels brave enough to do that. He knows he would never have faced up to it - any of what he’s been through - without them. 

Apparently Eddie doesn’t feel that way, though. Richie swallows down the disappointment, tells himself to get the fuck over it. Eddie is alive - Eddie is alive, when just a few hours ago they’d all been certain he was gone forever beneath the earth. Eddie is alive, and hand-on-heart, Richie can say that is enough for him. 

Still, the idea that Eddie might want to forget everything - that tomorrow he might wake up to find Eddie’s packed his stuff up and high-tailed it back to New York without so much as a glance over his shoulder is upsetting nonetheless. And perhaps it’s the exhaustion, or the idea of Eddie not wanting to remember things, or the fact that they’ve killed that nightmare clown which had plagued their childhood and teenage years - even if only in memory, after that first summer, and via feelings of unease and anxiety during adulthood - or maybe the memory of being run out of the arcade and of carving a pair of initials onto the fence across the kissing bridge, glancing over his shoulder in fear every few seconds, or perhaps the realisation that he is _sick _of hiding, of acting like he isn’t masking half his existence behind shitty jokes about masturbating over womens’ Facebook pages that somebody else wrote. 

And yeah, perhaps it isn’t the right time, when he’s so tired he could keel over and die, and the love of his pathetic fucking life is sat at the end of his hotel bed, married to a woman and seemingly considering the pros and cons of forgetting all about Richie again and the time they’ve spent together - but Richie is nothing if not the master of poor timing. 

And so he pokes Eddie with his toe through the duvet and he says, “Hey, Eds, can I tell you something?”

Eddie, disturbed from his musings, looks up at him. He says, “Yeah?”

The blood is pounding in Richie’s ears, and there’s a voice in his head screaming _nope, stop, go back, abort_. But before he can even consider the merits of keeping schtum, of maintaining the status quo and retreating to familiar, humdrum safety, he finds he has opened his big, stupid mouth, and said, “So, uh. I’m gay, dude.”

The world doesn’t begin to tremble around him. The ceiling doesn’t cave in. 

No clowns leap from the top of the wardrobe, cackling at him and his dirty little secret, which isn’t quite so secret anymore. 

It’s...alright. 

Eddie just looks at him, his eyebrows slightly raised. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment - and then, just as Richie is starting to panic and think that actually, perhaps things _aren’t _really alright - he says, “Oh. Okay.”

Secretly, Richie is relieved that Eddie hasn’t made a big deal about it; that he hasn’t said something stupid like, _oh, you’re still my friend, _or, _it doesn’t make any difference to our friendship_, or _it’s alright, you’re still the same person_, or some such bullshit. But because he can’t fucking help himself, particularly when it comes to Eddie, he says, “Okay? I just bared my heart and soul to you, and all you have to say is _okay?_”

Eddie snorts, then he looks away, down at his hands, and says, “My mom will be disappointed.”

Richie freezes for a moment - then he laughs, loud and sharp, because he can’t fucking help himself, okay, and in that moment, he thinks, _God, I love him. _

When he’s done cackling, he says, “I mean, it kinda explains why I could never keep it up when I was fucking her.”

Eddie screeches “Richie!”

Richie laughs again. “Sorry, Eds. Couldn’t resist.”

Eddie, twisting his lips together in that way Richie knows he does when he’s trying not to laugh, says, “Um...do the others know?”

Honestly, Richie isn’t sure. He thinks he probably made enough of a spectacle of himself today that they _might _have an idea, though he isn’t certain. He doesn’t really know where to go from here; if he wants to tell them, or let them figure it out on their own. He wanted to let Eddie know, but that’s...that’s because Eddie is different. 

He says, “I don’t know. Kinda. Maybe.”

Eddie doesn’t ask what this means, which Richie is thankful for. He just says, “Well, I won’t say anything, unless you say I can.”

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. He just says, “Thanks, dude,” and hopes that Eddie knows it’s not just in reference to him saying that he won’t tell the others. 

A moment passes, then Eddie says, “I mean, I guess it makes sense.”

Richie stiffens. “What does?”

Eddie says, “Well, you talked about girls a lot. Especially as you got older. Always telling us who you’d fingered behind the bleachers.”

Richie relaxes; laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess I don’t need to tell you none of that was actually true, huh?”

Eddie is smiling, head tilted to the side, looking at him. “Never believed it for a second, Rich,” he says. His eyes are just as soft and dark and round as Richie remembers. 

There’s a pause, then Eddie says “What about, uh, anyone else?” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, at work. Your manager. Your fans. Do they know you’re, um -”

“No,” Richie says. “And, uh, not that you would, but it’d be cool if you didn’t, like, take to Twitter or start running your mouth to any journalists.”

“Like you’re that famous,” Eddie says playfully, and Richie lets him have it, because while he’s not a Kardashian, he does have a blue tick after his name. Richie gets the impression Eddie isn’t much of a social media guy. He didn’t appear to have much of a presence online when Richie’d looked him up immediately after their reunion in the Jade of the Orient, though his dumbass wife seems to do nothing but post links to pyramid schemes on Facebook all day. 

Eddie is still watching him. Richie doesn’t know what it means. He thinks that he looks like he is thinking about something. Richie relaxes back into the bed; lets his body grow heavier and heavier. The Townhouse is completely silent now. Derry is quiet too. There is no more traffic passing outside. Richie closes his eyes. 

His head is getting fuzzy when Eddie says, “Are you going to sleep now?”

Richie almost says, _I’m trying to, asshole,_ but something stops him. He says, “Will you still be alive in the morning?”

There’s a pause, and briefly, Richie worries that he’s said the wrong thing; that he’s set off Eddie’s anxiety unintentionally. 

But then he feels the mattress shift under his body, and when he opens his eyes, Eddie is lying on his side next to him, back to the window, one hand beneath his head. Richie’s breath catches in his throat. 

Eddie says, “I hope so,” and then, inexplicably, he reaches across the space between them, and carefully removes Richie’s cracked glasses. 

*

Eddie never finds out if Mike went through with his plan to get everybody together for breakfast the next morning, because he doesn’t wake up until two in the afternoon. 

So much for being asleep for twenty years, he thinks, as he wakes up.

He isn’t the sort of person who hates sleeping in occasionally - in fact, he thinks he’d quite like to do it on a weekend, after a hard week at work, but Myra never lets him. Sometimes she claims it’s because sleeping too much is bad for you, and sometimes she says it’s because she doesn’t see enough of him in the week, and wants to spend more time with him, and then _that _makes him feel guilty because although he feels like he sees his wife plenty, she works from home and probably spends most of her time lonely and bored out of her mind. Either way, the nagging always works, and so Eddie rarely sleeps in past eight, even on a weekend. 

It’s a Wednesday, he realises slowly, stretching and casting his gaze around the room. 

He realises he’d left the television on the previous night, on mute. It’s currently playing some old soap rerun. He sits up to look around for the remote, and as he does so, he realises Richie is no longer in bed with him.

The thought of spending nearly eleven straight hours in a bed with Richie sets something in his stomach whirling, stresses him out in a way which only time spent with Richie Tozier can do - but he can’t think about that right now, can’t think about how he feels like he’s been hit repeatedly by a freight train these past few days, how the memories he’s recovered have filled him to the throat and choked him on that old longing which perhaps he’d forgotten the specifics of, once he’d left Derry, but which had nevertheless festered beneath the surface, haunted him like a tumour, and which he had valiantly repressed despite how miserable it had made him. 

He rubs his hands over his face. He’s not miserable. He’s not. He needs to get up; get some fresh air. Maybe he will feel better then. 

He needs his clothes to get up and go outside, though, and they are still in his room. 

Eddie suddenly feels very sick.

What is he going to do about the blood in the bathroom? About the ripped shower curtain? What is Mike going to do about the murder scene in the library? What is _Richie_ going to do? What are any of them going to do? His lungs constrict as he realises there’s bound to be DNA all over both locations, their DNA. Richie’s fingerprints will be on the axe...

As if on cue, the door handle suddenly rattles and Richie appears, a paper bag printed with the Starbucks logo dangling from his little finger, and a cardboard cup holder containing two tall coffees balanced precariously in his large hand. He’s wearing what appears to be a new pair of glasses - they look clean, and the lenses are uncracked.

“Good morning, Vietnam!” Richie says, slamming the door shut behind him. 

Despite the circumstances, it’s somewhat reassuring to know that Richie is still fully committed to remaining as irritating as possible. 

Eddie says, “Hello. It’s two in the afternoon.”

“That it is,” Richie says, dropping his room key on the nightstand and unloading his cargo. “I, however, have been up since eleven. You were out for the count, sleeping beauty.”

“Getting up at eleven is hardly something to be proud of,” Eddie says, primly. “Is that for me?”

“Well, I’m doing better than you,” Richie says, and sits down on the bed next to him, “and yes, it is. Don’t thank me or anything.”

Eddie says, “Derry has a Starbucks now?”

“Sure does.”

The thought is weirdly jarring.

In the bag there’s two danishes, two croissants, and some of those chocolate twists Eddie always feels guilty buying.

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, “amazing. You’re my hero.” He reaches in, extracts one of the danish pastries and a napkin.

Richie says, “What can I say, I know how to treat a guy,” and it’s just a joke, obviously, but given the context - Eddie sitting in Richie’s bed, wearing Richie’s underwear and his Guns N’ Roses shirt, eating a danish and drinking the coffee Richie has apparently purchased for him - the implication of his words make Eddie’s face hot and his throat tight. 

Richie, thank god, doesn’t say anything if he notices the blood rush to Eddie’s face. He just sits there on the edge of the bed, one leg hitched up, ankle resting on his knee, nursing his coffee, and grinning like an idiot, apparently pleased with his own dumb joke.

Eddie says, “What else have you been doing? Or were you lying about waking up at eleven?”

Richie’s eyes go wide and his eyebrows lift towards his hairline. “Eddie Spaghetti,” he says, “I would _never_.”

Eddie says, “Don’t call me that. What were you doing, then?”

There’s a pause. Then Richie says, “I went to check out your room.”

Eddie drops his food. 

“It was okay,” Richie says, hurriedly, “it was fine. Um. There was no blood. Nothing. Everything looked - fine.”

“What about the shower curtain?”

Richie frowns. “The shower curtain?”

“Yes. I - I stabbed Bowers through the curtain, when he attacked me. Was it ripped?”

Richie blinks. “Uhh...I - I don’t think so. I can’t say I noticed. Wait, you _stabbed _Bowers?”

“It was self-defence!”

“Still,” Richie says, and Eddie tries not to focus on how the look Richie gives him makes him warm all over again, makes him feel like he did back in the sewers when Richie told him he was braver than he thought. 

“They must have cleaned it up,” Eddie says, instead. “They cleaned it up - that means they saw it. It...it was a lot of blood, I think, I - I don’t remember, I was so freaked out, but I got stabbed, and Bowers got stabbed, it must have been a lot - did you see anyone this morning?”

“What?” Richie says. “I saw Mike. Before I went to Starbucks. We -”

“No, not - not Mike,” Eddie says, desperate to make Richie understand. His hands are shaking now, and all he can think is _DNA DNA DNA, _over and over again, pounding against the side of his brain like a drumbeat. “I mean people who work here, that woman, did you hear anyone say anything about my room, did they ask you? I mean, they must have called the cops, that much blood -”

“Eds,” Richie says, loudly, and he puts his own breakfast down, and grabs Eddie’s hands. “Eds. I met up with Mike. I went to his. I called him this morning, first thing when I woke up, to ask about, you know, about Bowers’ body. He said - he said the body was gone.”

Eddie stills. 

Richie says, “It was gone, Eds. I went over there right away. There was no body. There was no - shit smashed up from the fight. The axe was back where it was before. Everything was.”

Eddie blinks at him, wondering if Richie is lying, if he is just trying to reassure him that everything will work out okay. 

He says, “It - it was?”

“Yeah.” Richie picks up his drink again, eyes trained on Eddie. “We, uh...after that, Mike called the psycho unit. We looked up the number. He said he was Bowers’ friend, asked if he could talk to him. Said he wanted to come visit. And the nurse he spoke to said he wasn’t allowed any visitors at the moment, ‘cause he’d attacked some of the other patients and orderlies, and he’d gotten out and been found wandering around the perimeter fence last night.”

Eddie says, “M-maybe you didn’t kill him then. Maybe he was just injured -”

“Maybe,” Richie says. “But Mike asked if he was okay, acted all worried and asked if he’d hurt himself, and the nurse said the worst thing he’d done was scraped himself on some of the wire fencing as he ran out.”

Eddie breathes out, hard. He says, “Are you - are you sure?”

Richie smiles at him, and it’s gentle. “Pretty sure, bud.”

“Holy fuck,” Eddie says, and he pulls away from Richie; raises a hand to his hair.

“You’re telling me,” Richie says. “I thought I was about to get the chair.”

Eddie says, “There’s no death penalty in Maine, dumbass.” But he’s smiling. He can’t stop smiling. The relief is overwhelming. He actually feels kind of lightheaded. 

“Still,” Richie says. “Would you have come to visit me in prison?”

“Not on your life.”

“Eds! Your mom would have visited me.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m talking about conjugal visits, by the way.”

“I’m gonna give you one more chance to shut the fuck up.”

But even as he says this, he is smiling, and laughing, and Richie is smiling too, and Eddie honestly cannot remember the last time he was this happy. 

They eat breakfast in the early afternoon, and drink their Starbucks, and Eddie exclaims in horror over the amount of sugar Richie puts in his coffee, and then they kick back on the bed and watch trashy daytime TV, and Eddie almost cries with laughter at the running commentary Richie keeps up. Sometimes he switches the programme to mute, and gives the people gesturing wordlessly onscreen ridiculous voices and lines that are no doubt far funnier and ten times more insane than what is actually being said, and Eddie remembers them doing this exact same thing when they were younger, lying on the floor of Richie’s living room, laughing until they couldn’t breathe. He remembers Richie’s parents coming home to find them rolling around screaming at the top of their lungs, and sometimes Wentworth would sit with them and join in, and Maggie would shake her head at them from the doorway, grinning all the same, and Eddie would think, _I don’t want to go home_.

It had always been hard, leaving his friends’ houses after visiting - especially Richie’s, which was so loud and chaotic and _fun_, where Richie could say what he liked and his parents would listen, and respond, and indulge him in his silliness, and even talk to Eddie too, and ask him questions like his opinion mattered, and give him choices - _chicken or beef, Eddie? You prefer baseball or basketball? Ice cream or candy? _\- and seemed to genuinely like having him around. 

“You could learn some manners from Eddie,” he recalls Maggie telling Richie once, pushing her dark curly hair off her forehead, and he remembers Richie scoffing, because he _knows _he’d had a mouth on him back then - he just didn’t speak like that in front of adults, unlike Richie, who had vocalised every weird and inconsequential thought which floated through his brain regardless of how crude or stupid it was. 

But Richie’s parents had never gasped, or frowned, or yelled at him. They’d just smiled patiently, or prodded him lovingly, and Eddie had looked on in envy. 

When it had been time to go he’d always felt cold, and sad, even though Richie’s house was far messier than his own, and definitely not as clean, and occasionally there were floorboards or pieces of carpet missing, or nails sticking out of walls when Maggie was halfway through a DIY project, and really, Eddie could have been injured so easily - 

But he’d been sad nonetheless, when the sky had begun to darken, and the streetlamps had started to glow. 

He remembers, once, when things had been particularly difficult at home, and Wentworth and Maggie were washing up the remains of dinner, and he’d been sat on the sofa, lacing his shoes up. And he had suddenly been overcome with the most horrendous wave of grief. 

It had been ridiculous - he’d known that even at the time. It had been a week night, and he had school the following day, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to see Richie or the others the next morning. But for whatever reason, he remembers the lump in his throat; the sour taste; the realisation that all of a sudden he could hardly breathe. 

“Eds!” Richie had said, and he still doesn’t know how Richie had registered these things almost as fast as he himself had done; how he’d just _known _when Eddie’s asthma was playing up, as though it was _his _lungs snapping shut and _his _lips turning blue. “Eds, are you okay?”

And he remembers shaking his head, suddenly finding his vision blurred, and looking up at Richie, half-blind, and saying, “I don’t wanna go home.”

They hadn’t talked about it afterwards, but Richie had sighed, like a child wise beyond his years, and flopped down next to him, and thrown an arm around his shoulders. And they’d just sat there in silence until Eddie was composed again and ready to go. And Richie had said, “See ya tomorrow, Eddie Spaghetti,” and Eddie had said, “Don’t call me Eddie Spaghetti,” and normalcy had been restored.

Thinking about it now, he doesn’t really know why he’d gotten so sad whenever he’d been playing with his friends, and it had come time to head home, or why he’d almost cried that one time at Richie’s house. His mom was difficult at times, sure, overprotective and frustrating and anxious, but it wasn’t _that _bad. 

Hormones, he guesses. 

Still, he can’t help thinking about it all now, sitting on the bed with Richie in the Derry Townhouse, because it feels somewhat like the morning after a sleepover, and he knows he has to go home soon. 

There’s no reason to stay in Derry. 

He doesn’t think he ever wants to come back. 

He has to go back to work - he’s taken what remains of his annual leave allowance and will end up going unpaid if he isn’t back by Friday - and he has to go back to his wife, who has probably attempted to call in the National Guard by now, assuming the worst. 

He may have actually died, he thinks, and the thought is almost as funny as it is horrifying, though he’s sure Myra won’t see it that way.

But, he reasons, it is getting later in the day, and he still needs to book a flight, and he doesn’t want to have to navigate his way from LaGuardia to his apartment in the dark, and he’ll be exhausted if he goes to work tomorrow, but he doesn’t really want to spend the day at home, doing nothing - not that being at home is bad, of course, it just seems like a waste of time. So he figures it will be better to get a flight around lunchtime tomorrow, maybe a little bit before, and he can arrive home in the afternoon, and get unpacked and sorted for work - maybe catch up with his missed emails - before going to sleep. 

That makes more sense. 

He needs to book a flight, then - but doing that means he needs to use his phone, and doing _that _requires heading up to his own room to collect it, the room where there apparently is no blood but which unnerves him anyway. And he knows he has to do it at some point, but still. 

He turns to Richie and says, “I’m thinking I’ll head home tomorrow.”

Richie tears his attention away from the TV screen. “Oh,” he says, like the thought hasn’t even occurred to him. “Oh, yeah, I guess...yeah.” He turns back to Dr Phil, crossing his legs at the ankle. “Yeah...Mike was saying Bill was planning on flying out tomorrow. Apparently he’s _needed on set_.” He makes air quotes in front of him with his long fingers like it’s a joke, but he’s not smiling. 

Eddie feels mildly uncomfortable, though he’s not sure why. 

He says, “Could I, uh, borrow your phone? I didn’t actually book a flight home. Didn’t know how long we were gonna be here.” He tries not to think about the fact that he almost hadn’t needed one.

“Yeah,” Richie says, and he sits up, grabs his phone from his back pocket, unlocks it. He says, “Don’t you start going through my Grindr messages.”

Eddie says, “Gross, dude,” and tries very hard not to think about Richie using Grindr. 

Instead, he navigates to Google, and searches for details of flights from BGR to LGA.

*

By silent agreement, they do not go to the Jade of the Orient for dinner. Eddie thinks it will be a long time before he wants to eat Chinese food again. 

Instead, Mike brings them to an Italian place on the outskirts of town, that’s authentic and cramped and noisy. 

They share a cab - him and Richie and Bev and Ben - Bill is absent from the Townhouse, apparently having spent his last day in town with Mike. 

Eddie is anxious about seeing them in the light of day, for some reason, though he only saw them the previous night. But when they meet in the foyer, Bev throws her arms around him, and kisses his cheek - his good cheek - and Ben hugs him too, patting him on the back, and the knot which had formed in his chest whilst he showered and dressed that afternoon had loosened a little. 

Richie, for some reason, puts his hand on Eddie’s lower back when they enter the restaurant, and keeps it there whilst Mike waves at them from across the room, and though Eddie isn’t sure why he does it, he’s grateful for the gesture nonetheless. 

Mike leaps up from his chair when they reach him, and pulls him into a hug, his smile as genuine and bright as it had been at thirteen years old.

He says, “How’re you holding up, buddy?” like he really cares, and it settles Eddie’s stomach, which had begun to churn again in the car.

“Okay,” Eddie says, “all things considered, I guess.”

There’s the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor as somebody stands up, then Richie’s hand is back again as Bill appears from behind Mike.

“Hey, Eddie,” he says. His voice is a little rough, and he looks exhausted, but he’s smiling, a little sheepishly, Eddie thinks, and he isn’t screaming that Eddie isn’t real, so that’s an improvement on last night. 

Eddie says, “Hey, Bill.” He raises a hand awkwardly, then immediately regrets it because it probably makes him look stupid. He thinks he should probably have hugged Bill like he did with the others, but he feels uncomfortable again, anxious of making a misstep, like he’s treading on eggshells -

But then Richie moves his hand on his spine, just slightly, and it sucks his brain back into the room, into the restaurant, and Bill is saying, “Listen Eddie, I’m - I’m sorry about last night. I just -” his voices catches, and there’s a lump in Eddie’s throat too as he says, “It’s okay, Bill. I get it. Don’t worry.”

They don’t order quite as much alcohol as they did the first night - just a bottle of white and a red - and definitely no shots, despite Richie’s dramatic protests, though Eddie knows he’s just joking, trying to keep things light. 

But the reality is that things are different now; forever changed. Now they remember. 

Now they can’t forget. 

Now Eddie has died and come back, and Henry Bowers too, apparently, and that thought, weirdly, is far more frightening than any murderous sewer clown that eats children. 

“Well,” says Richie, “this is weird.”

Eddie thinks about how Richie had held him last night at the top of the staircase. How he had sobbed, gripped him tight. How his bed had been dirty, as though Richie hadn’t bothered to wash since getting back from Neibolt; as though he’d just lain on his back and stared at the ceiling until Eddie had appeared. He realises he is gripping the edge of the tabletop. He lets go. 

“I just,” Bev says, and she sags forwards, puts her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. “I can’t believe it’s all over. We only remembered, what, a day? Two days ago? But it feels like this thing’s been haunting me my whole life.”

“_Is_ it over?” Ben says, and Eddie wishes he hadn’t. He wishes he could repress everything that’s happened to him over the past few days; wishes he never had to think about that damn clown again; the pain; the darkness of the sewers. Waking up to find he might have died; might still be half-dead. “Is it - do we know for sure, Mikey?”

Mike says, “I think it is.” He’s the only one of them who seems unafraid, Eddie thinks - he knows _he _is fucking terrified, and Bev’s face is strained, and Ben had seemed so unwilling to believe things might be over, and Bill looks shellshocked, and Richie’s spine is poker-straight, his elbows pressed to his sides. “I think so. The scars are gone. The Well House collapsed. We pulled out It’s _heart. _And Derry -” he glances around the restaurant, expression thoughtful. “Derry feels...different. Not as...heavy. It feels like it’s waking up.”

Eddie doesn’t feel it. He hasn’t noticed a thing. But then again, he has spent the whole day cocooned in Richie’s hotel room. He has, so far, felt no desire whatsoever so set out into the streets of Derry again. 

But then, whilst the rest of them had moved on and buried the trauma, Mike had stayed. Mike had remained there, in that numb, insular town. Mike knew more than all of them - if Mike thought it was dead -

Bill says, “What about Eddie?”

Everyone looks at him. Eddie’s mouth is dry.

Bill says, “How did Eddie come back, Mike? How did Bowers -” he stops, pressing his lips together. 

A pause, quivering and anxious. Mike finally says, “I don’t know about that. Maybe we’ll never know.”

Maybe they won’t, but Eddie wants to know anyway, desperately. It intrigues him as much as it terrifies him. 

He tries not to think too long on his reasons for wanting to know, but deep, deep down inside him, there is a nasty, bitter little voice telling him that it is because there was no reason for his coming back; that he didn’t deserve to. That if Stan didn’t get to come back, and if Georgie didn’t get to come back, he should definitely not have come back. He’s not brave like the rest of them; not really. He’d thrown the spear at the clown when It had Richie suspended in the Deadlights, but ultimately, what had that achieved? A spear through the gut and more questions than answers. One of the others would have saved Richie eventually, anyway.

He feels shaky and lightheaded, and he knows without looking up that the others keep shooting glances at him, and he knows they’re just curious, that they probably want to know just as much as he does - Bill wants to know, anyhow - but he can’t help the instinctual fear his body responds with; the way his shoulders raise to his ears, the way his heart begins to hammer, the way he wants to raise his hands in defence, cover his face, beg and plead and apologise. 

He hates it. 

He says, “I want to know too, Bill.” His voice sounds small even in the packed restaurant. 

Richie shifts slightly at his side; he sees it from the corner of his eye. 

Bill says, “What happened, Eddie?”

Eddie’s mouth is dry. He swallows, and he feels like he is swallowing his own tongue. 

He’s heard of that happening before - of the dangers of drinking too much, then passing out on your back. He knows that if someone is drunk and passes out, you have to roll them onto their side, or front. You have to keep an eye on them; make sure they don’t choke on their own tongue. He’s not sure where he heard about that; it’s just something he knows. He’d spent his entire college experience terrified of it happening to him.

Bill says, “Eddie?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says. He pauses, thinks. “I don’t - I don’t remember much. I remember - Mike being caught. Then Richie distracted It, then -” he cannot help but shudder. “The Deadlights. I don’t really remember much after that. I guess I threw the piece of fence at It - the thing Bev gave me. Then - It got me, I think. It stabbed me. It - it hurt.”

He glances round the table. Bev is staring at him, wide-eyed and frightened. Richie’s mouth is closed tight. He looks distinctly uncomfortable.

Mike’s expression is soft, open. “And after that?” he says. “Do you remember what happened next?”

Eddie remembers being guided to a different spot in the caves; laid down. He remembers Richie holding onto him; being frightened when Richie left. He doesn’t remember anything more from those blurry final moments. 

He says, “Not really. Everything happened so fast. I - I knew I was dying.”

Somebody exhales heavily close to him. He doesn’t look up; doesn’t want to know who it is. 

“When I woke up, it was dark. I was confused. Everything hurt.” He tries to remember, but all he can think of is how the fear had eclipsed all else. He wants to move past it; to see what had actually happened, but it is so hard. “It was hard to move. I realised everything had collapsed and caved in. I was scared you guys were trapped somewhere and couldn’t get out. I called for you -”

Richie says, “Eds -”

Eddie says, “I just kept thinking, I don’t wanna die here. So when I realised I was alone, I got up, and started walking. I didn’t see the clown. I just kept walking.”

Bill says, “Bu-but - you were _skewered_, Eddie. Right - right through the m-middle.”

To his left, Richie slides his fingers beneath his glasses; presses his fingertips against his eyes. 

Eddie says, “I know. I don’t - know. I just thought, I don’t wanna die, and I might as well try and get out, and so - so I did. When I next looked it was healing.”

There had been somebody else there too, he thinks - someone who had looked at the wound in his front and back and said it wasn’t as bad as he’d initially thought. Another man. He has no idea who he was, though. Come to think of it, he has no idea if the man had gotten out with him. When he’d opened his eyes on Neibolt Street he’d been alone. He hadn’t given the other guy another thought; all he’d wanted, desperately, was to be with his friends. 

He says, “I think there was somebody else there with me.”

Bill says, “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Mike says, “What did they look like?”

It had been dark down there. Even now, picturing that damp, horrible place, the surroundings are swallowed by black. He’d hardly got a good look at the guy. 

He says, “I don’t know. It was a man. He was youngish, I think.”

Ben says, “Where is he now? What happened to him? Did he get out?”

Eddie says, “I don’t know,” again, and feels stupid and ashamed. 

Everyone is quiet. 

After a while, Bill says, “I just - I wish we knew how. Or why. I just…” he trails off. He’s looking at Mike more than he’s looking at Eddie. 

Eddie gets it. He thinks about how Pennywise had taken the form of Georgie; had tricked Bill down in the sewers, in his own house. He knows what it’s like to doubt your own sanity; to suddenly have everything you know flipped upside down. 

He thinks of his mother; the placebos. 

To have it done to you the way Bill had experienced it, though - for it to be so visual…

The leper he had seen had been real, or at least as real as the clown - he’d touched It. But Bill’s experience was on another level. He thinks about what he’d seen in the pharmacy basement all those years ago; how he’d thought he’d seen his mother, strapped to that medical examination chair. He imagines Bill seeing that again and again and again; seeing the little brother he thought he’d killed. 

He thinks about how Bill must have felt when Eddie had reappeared in the hallway the previous night. 

He wonders how Bill will go on; how Bill ever went on in the first place. How must it feel, he wonders, to look at another person, a friend, a loved one, and not know if they are who they appear?

The thought sickens him to his stomach. 

Nobody says anything for a long moment, then Richie says, “Maybe somebody out there decided we deserved a better ending.”

It’s a little silly, because Richie never believed in God, even as a kid, and Eddie’s pretty agnostic - the others are the same, he thinks, it was only ever Stan who was actually religious, despite the way he’d argued with and pushed back against his father, he’d still believed in _something _\- but Eddie catches Richie’s gaze from the corner of his eye. And it warms him, right down to the core. 

They all look at each other, and there’s still fear; still exhaustion; still disbelief. But they have each other, and that’s something. 

Eddie remembers Richie, that first night in the Jade of the Orient, telling them all how glad he was that they were there together; how his stomach had fluttered at those words, and he’d felt valued and happy for the first time in longer than he cared to admit. How something had softened within him, said _Oh, this is how it feels. _And he still isn’t sure what _it_ was, but he was glad it was there. 

Bill is still staring at the tabletop. Mike is watching him carefully. 

Bev leans across the table towards him, and says, “We’re so relieved you’re here, Eddie. So - we love you. All of us. So much. When we were down in the sewers - when we thought you were -” She cannot finish. 

_But I _was_, _Eddie thinks, _I was. _

“Whatever happened down there,” Bev says, recovering a little, “I don’t know. We might not ever know. But we were so -” she breaks off again, looking at Richie. 

Richie says, “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, Eds,” but he sounds choked up, and he doesn’t look at Eddie. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay, man,” Mike says, and Bill nods, slowly. “We don’t get it. Bev’s right. Maybe we won’t ever get it. But something - something gave us all a second chance. I - I love you, man.” He looks round the table at the others. “All of you. I love you all so much.” He sounds a little choked-up, and Eddie is suddenly consumed by an overwhelming surge of affection for Mike, so gentle and sweet and clever and kind - for all of his friends, and he thinks he might start crying. 

“We love you too, Mikey,” Bill says, and Ben says, “Yeah,” softly. 

Eddie can’t do anything but nod. 

“We’re not gonna forget again,” Richie says, suddenly. “Not again.” It isn’t a question. 

The others nod, and Eddie wants nothing more than to put his arms around them; all of them. To press his face into their necks, to throw his head back and laugh and ride his bike through town until sundown, to jump into the quarry in nothing but starchy underwear, to play games and shriek in the arcade, skin his knees and fight over the hammock in the clubhouse, to grow up and experience his first kiss, his first time drinking, his first time smoking, to lie on his back in a field under a star-marked navy sky and share secrets with them - all of them. But he is old now, and those chances are long gone. But Richie’s right - not again. Not ever. They’re back together, and they love one another, and this time, they’ll do it right. This time, they’ll remember.

He feels unbearably sad and bereft and yet hopeful, and there is a thick lump in the back of his throat.

Ben says, “It doesn’t - it doesn’t feel right without, Stan, though.”

And there it is; the void opening up once again. 

There is no empty chair for Stan tonight; no space saved for him. 

Stan does not get to partake in the better ending.

They do not look at each other. 

A waiter appears at Richie’s elbow. “Are you ready to order?” he says. 

Eddie hasn’t even looked at the menu, and he didn’t see any of the others reading it either, but they all stumble through what they want anyhow, too uncomfortable to let that Stan-shaped silence continue. 

The waiter collects up their menus and leaves. 

They sit there in silence for a moment. Then Bill picks up his glass, holds it aloft, and says, “To Stan.”

They raise their glasses. They toast to Stan. 

Eddie wonders what will happen about the funeral; wonders if it’s already taken place. He’s not sure what the rites are in Judaism around death, burial, suicide. He wonders whether, if it hasn’t already taken place, it would be possible for the six of them to attend the funeral, to say goodbye. He knows that Stan’s married; he’s not sure what his wife would think about that - six apparent school friends Stan has likely never even mentioned before turning up in tears.

He wonders whether he should ask the others what they think. 

He says nothing. 

He keeps his mouth shut. 

Ben says, “You heading home tomorrow, Bill?”

A pause. “Yeah,” Bill says. “Gotta head back to the set. We’re uh, having issues with the ending. Nobody say anything,” he adds, quickly. 

Eddie sees Richie fold his arms, sit back in his seat, smirking. It’s probably taking all he’s got not to rib Bill about that. 

Bill says, “Plus I need to let my wife know I’m still alive. She’s never been to Maine.” He rubs his face. “She thinks it’s all cabins in the woods and hillbillies out here.”

Richie says, “She’s not wrong,” and Bill huffs out a laugh. 

Bev says, “What’re you gonna do, Mikey? You staying here?”

Mike waves his hand. “Nah. No reason to. Not anymore,” and something in Eddie’s chest slackens a little. It’s somewhat horrifying to think of Mike, trapped here in this bloody, close-minded, miserable little town for the past twenty-seven years, held captive by a dormant demon he alone carried the memory of. It’s mind-boggling, how strong, how resilient Mike had to be to do that. Eddie is a little in awe of him. 

Of all of them, he thinks, Mike deserves the good ending the most. 

Bill says, “Where will you go?”

“Florida, right Mike?” Bev says, and Mike smiles at her. 

“Maybe I’ll start there,” he says, and Richie claps him on the back, and says, “Hell yeah, road trip!”

“Something like that,” Mike says, “blow out the cobwebs.”

“Well _I’m _going on a road trip too,” Bev says, and when they all turn to look at her, she says, “Going on a one-way ticket to split city.”

Eddie says, “Huh?”

Bill says, “Oh my God -”

Bev says, “That’s right. I’m gonna rinse the asshole for everything he’s got.”

Richie says, “Holy shit, you’re getting a _divorce?”_

“Sure am.”

“Fuck,” Richie says, then he says, “well, congrats, Bev! Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”

“Yeah, congratulations, Bev,” Mike says. “You know we’re all here if you need anything.”

Ben, sitting on Bev’s left, reaches out, squeezes her shoulder, and Eddie hears him say, “I’m proud of you,” and it’s not loud and exclamatory, but soft, gentle - meant just for her. 

Eddie feels a bit funny, though he isn’t sure why.

He’s relieved for Bev, of course - he’s seen the marks on her arms, and he’s not stupid - but it’s setting something off inside him, some ripple of anxiety, and he realises that he’s wiggling his foot from side to side under the table and he can’t stop. 

He manages to say congratulations to Bev - he’s not going to sit there like a dickhead and not say anything - but the words come out weirdly breathy, and he isn’t sure if anybody notices.

“What’ll you do, Ben?” Mike says. 

Ben says something about maybe taking some time off - he’s always working, he says, and it would be nice to have a bit of a break. Mike tells him he’s always welcome to meet up, if he wants some company, and Ben says that sounds great, but Eddie still feels like he has water in his ears. 

Richie nudges him. “You okay?” he says. 

Eddie nods, but he isn’t sure if he is. He wishes he didn’t feel so fragile, like a gust of wind could sweep him away. He feels like he could look into a mirror and not recognise his own face. He suddenly doesn’t want to be there anymore, in the restaurant, in Derry, even though he’s with his friends - the best friends he’s ever had. The only friends he’s ever had, in truth. He doesn’t know where he’d rather be, but it’s not here. He doesn’t want to go home, either, back to New York, back to his wife, even though that thought feels dangerous and dirty. He feels like he’s suspended in mid-air, halfway between the past and the future, between life and death, and he’s afraid that one tiny movement in the wrong direction could send him plummeting down beneath the crust of the earth, into the damp, cold, dark. 

Something has to give, he thinks. 

But he doesn’t say any of this to Richie. He doesn’t even know how he can begin to verbalise it. 

So he just says, “Yeah. I’m okay,” and he even manages a smile. 

Richie looks like he doesn’t quite believe him - of course he doesn’t, he’s always been weirdly tuned-in to Eddie’s thoughts and feeling and being, has always known when Eddie is about to panic, when he needs his inhaler, has always been acutely aware of just how far he can push Eddie - Eddie thinks he has, anyway. It would explain why Richie had managed to annoy him so much when they were growing up, and has continued to annoy him over the last couple of days, without ever slipping into the realm of genuinely detestable. 

Nevertheless, Richie nods once, slowly, and under the table, out of sight of the others, he touches Eddie’s arm, lightly, just below the elbow. 

Eddie feels like his skin is on fire. 

Richie withdraws from him; reaches for his wine. 

The food arrives shortly afterwards, and then they don’t talk for a bit, except about the garlic bread, and the pizza, and the pasta, and how good it all is. Then Bill asks Richie if he’s flying out tomorrow, and Richie says he probably should - he has shows lined up, and he needs to grovel to his agent for bombing his last appearance in Chicago, and Bill says they should meet up once they’re back.

Mike says, “What about you, Eddie? You going home tomorrow?”

Eddie tells him he is. 

Ben says, “Eddie, what’re you - what’re you gonna tell your wife? About your scar, I mean? On your -” He waves towards his stomach. 

Eddie’s insides clench painfully. He hasn’t even begun to think about that. Despite the fact that he’d booked his flight back to New York just a few hours ago, he hasn’t really considered what will happen once he actually arrives back at the apartment. 

Myra will cry and yell, of course. 

Eddie will beg forgiveness. He’s practiced at it. He thinks that both he and his wife know it isn’t a genuine request for absolution, or an apology. Like everything else they do together, it is a gesture at something they _should _be doing; a ritual, a symbol. 

He doesn’t know how to _not _do his relationship like that. 

In truth, though, the scar is the least of his concerns. He thinks that Richie would never stop making fun of him if he found out, but he genuinely can’t remember the last time he and Myra had sex. He very rarely gets dressed or undressed in front of her, and neither of them are the type of people to wander around the apartment half-clothed, even on a weekend. Most of the time they sleep in separate rooms; something Myra had suggested after Eddie had woken her up one too many times in the night, flailing, kicking out and shouting at something he could no longer recall the following morning. 

He had felt guilty at the time for how relieved the suggestion had made him. 

To Ben, he says, “I think it’s healing up. I just - won’t let her see it. It’ll be fine.”

Ben looks a little confused, and Bill’s eyebrows draw inwards towards one another, but he ignores it, staring into the pattern on the rim of his plate instead. 

Nobody mentions Myra again, which is a relief, and again, brings him great shame when he realises this; as they leave the restaurant, Bill is telling Richie about _his _wife, regaling him with the story of how they met on the set of a movie in which Audra had spent most of her time in her underwear, and Bill had spent most of his paralysed by embarrassment - Richie is cackling at him and mocking him loudly - and then Bev comes up behind him, nudges him with her elbow. 

“Hey,” she says, softly. “It’s okay, you know. Divorce.”

Eddie starts. “W-what?” he says. 

She smiles. “My divorce. Back there, you seemed kind of awkward about it. I just wanted to let you know - it’s okay. He was - _is _\- an asshole. So in some cases, divorce can be a good thing.”

Eddie says, “I - I know it can.”

“Alright,” Bev says, and she loops her arm through the crook of his. “Good. Just wanted to let you know.”

Eddie can’t really think of anything to say to that, so they walk, arm-in-arm down the street, back to the Townhouse, following Richie and Bill and Mike and Ben’s backs into the night. At last he says, “I am glad for you, you know. If he’s...well, you’re a good person, Bev. You deserve to be happy.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” she says. She looks happy. Really happy. “You do too, you know.”

Something catches in his throat at this, but Bev doesn’t push it, and they walk the rest of the way back to the hotel in silence. 

*

There’s no discussion when they get back to the Townhouse about where Eddie is going to sleep. Everybody peels off to their own rooms after saying goodnight to each other, and to Mike, as he heads back into the night, whistling, face turned to the stars, and Eddie doesn’t even think about it when he heads back up to Richie’s room with him. Richie doesn’t comment, which is a relief - just unlocks the door and switches the lights on.

“I need my stuff,” Eddie says, before Richie can throw himself onto the bed, shoes and all, “from my room.”

Richie looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Okay?” he says. “Go get it.”

Eddie clenches his hands into fists. Don’t make me say it, he thinks. 

“You’re an asshole,” he says instead. 

Richie says, “Woah! What was that for?” but he grabs Eddie’s key from the nightstand, and moves back across the room and opens the door. He turns to Eddie. “You coming?” he says.

Eddie doesn’t particularly want to, but he follows Richie upstairs anyway. 

The room is dark, and cold, and almost exactly the same as it was when Eddie was last in there. He tries to not think about it. 

He hadn’t unpacked, which was unusual for him - but after he’d repacked all his stuff that first night, convinced he was going to leave, he hadn’t had chance to take it all out again, so it only takes a moment to do a quick lap of the room to make sure he’s got all his shit. His phone is out on the bed, though it isn’t hooked up to his charger, which is plugged into the wall behind the headboard. Unsurprisingly, the battery is dead. He pockets the phone and picks up the charger, winding the cord between his fingers as he waits for Richie to locate all his bits and pieces from the bathroom. 

He doesn’t want to go in there, though he knows the fear is irrational. 

Fear has always been a paralytic for him, regardless of its origin. When he is frightened of a demonic clown or a shapeshifting leper he freezes, and when he is frightened of making changes in his life or of his mother, or - he refuses to allow himself to finish that thought - well. He freezes then, too. His whole life, he feels like he has been still, treading water, tipping his chin up and desperately fighting to keep his head above the surface. 

From the bathroom, Richie says, “Hey, Eds, I can’t see anything wrong with the shower curtain.”

Startled from his thoughts, Eddie says, “What do you mean?”

Light fills the bathroom, and Richie pokes his head out round the door frame. “The shower curtain,” he says, “you said this morning you stabbed Bowers through it. There’s nothing there.”

Eddie swallows anxiously. 

Richie says, “Come see.”

Eddie says, “It’s okay. Let’s go.”

Richie takes a step into the bedroom, holding Eddie’s toiletry bag in his right hand. “Come on,” he says, like it isn’t a big deal, like Eddie’s brain isn’t currently going haywire, synapses firing off at light speed inside his skull with the memory of being attacked in that very bathroom, the shock and pain of his cheek being pierced, the terror of being cornered in front of the bathtub, all the other ways that confrontation could have ended if he hadn’t somehow managed to pull the knife out of his own skin, hold it in front of him in shaking hands, sneak outside, back pressed to the wall, shaking harder than he thinks he’s ever done in his life -

“I,” Eddie says.

Richie’s expression is gentle, sympathetic, and Eddie is reminded of the way he’d put his hand on his cheek in the sewers and told him he was braver than he thought. 

It was sweet of Richie to say, and it had given him the courage to jump down into the dark with the rest of the Losers; to launch the iron fence post into Pennywise’s gaping jaws when Richie was caught in the Deadlights, but Eddie knows that decades of feeling like your insides are tied in knots, of constant self-doubt and a terrible sense of impending doom even when nothing was immediately obviously wrong are not things that go away just because your childhood best friend says something nice to you. 

“You don’t have to,” Richie says, “but don’t you think you’d feel better if you saw for yourself?”

He’s right, of course - if he doesn’t see it, Eddie _knows _he’ll be up all night wondering whether Richie had simply lied to make him feel better, or if Richie was hallucinating - and perhaps seeing the shower curtain, if the tear really _has _disappeared, will make him feel better about the huge scar in his middle which seems to be slowly knitting itself back together - but none of this displaces the intense, irrational fear which is rooting his feet into the dull hotel carpet.

“Do you want to?” Richie says. 

Eddie nods. 

Richie moves towards him cautiously, puts a hand on his shoulder. “I promise it’s okay,” he says. He starts to take a step forwards, but Eddie doesn’t move. He genuinely doesn’t think he can. 

“This is stupid,” he says, and he hates how he can hear his own voice trembling.

Richie frowns. “It’s not stupid,” he says, and rejoins Eddie at his side. “It’s not. Dude, you got stabbed _twice_ in the last forty-eight hours. You nearly -” he stops. “If I was you, I would be - I would be high as _fuck, _man. I would have smoked so much weed. I might still need to.” He perks up a bit. “Hey, you wanna get stoned?”

“No,” Eddie says, trying to sound irritated, but he can’t help the smile threatening at the corners of his mouth.

Richie grins back, and something wound tight inside Eddie, like an elastic band with one too many twists in it, slackens - just a little. 

They move towards the bathroom together. Eddie’s legs feel like lead, and his chest feels tight, and not for the first time, he wishes he still had his inhaler. 

The bathroom is - normal. Just a normal bathroom, just the same as it had been the night Eddie had arrived, cleared of all his stuff, because of course it is. Of course nothing was going to happen. 

Inexplicably, Eddie thinks of Bev’s bathroom when they were kids, how everything had been red red _red_, and then he thinks, well, you can never be sure in Derry. 

He stands in the middle of the tiled floor, glancing around. His eyes catch upon the mirror above the sink, and he looks away quickly, half-convinced that if he stares for too long, he will see Henry Bowers’ smirking face pop up behind him. 

Richie leaves his side, steps towards the tub. “Look,” he says, and he grabs the curtain in his free hand. “No cut.”

Eddie looks, and Richie is correct. There is no slice through the curtain. No indication that anything terrible ever happened to him in this bathroom. 

He exhales. The breath comes out a little harder than he’d have thought it would. 

“No,” says Eddie. He takes a step towards the tub; towards Richie. He reaches out, and runs a finger down the cheap, plasticky material. There’s no cut. It’s whole. It’s fine. 

He looks back at Richie. 

He says, “You got my bag?”

Richie says, “Yeah.”

Eddie takes it from him, trying to ignore the way their fingers brush when he does so. “You get my suitcases. I was stabbed twice in the last forty-eight hours.”

*

Back in Richie’s room, Eddie plugs his phone in to charge, but he doesn’t turn it on. He knows that when he does, he will be besieged by hundreds of text messages and voicemails - angry, anxious, upset. He knows exactly how the messages will go, because these exchanges have been played out many, many times before, though admittedly on a smaller scale, at times when his schedule has changed unexpectedly, and he’s had to stay late at work, or a meeting’s run over, or he’s gotten stuck in traffic, or - God forbid - he’s been invited out for drinks after work, and actually accepted the invitation. 

He feels bad for getting so frustrated with the way Myra feels the need to check in with him constantly - the way she messages him multiple times a day, the way she flies into a blind panic and calls continuously if he doesn’t respond - because it should be nice to have someone so concerned about you, someone who cares so much they check in on you like that. It should. 

And then he thinks that perhaps his feeling bad is part of his wife’s elaborate plan to bind him to her out of pity or guilt - and then that, of course, leads to more guilt over the fact that he would ever think that. 

He doesn’t think Myra is that conniving, though - he doesn’t think so. 

Sometimes, however, when it’s late and he’s alone in bed, in his own bedroom, his wife snoring on the other side of the wall and he’s too tired to stop the thoughts that drift through his head, he wonders if she even likes him. 

He supposes she does, or she wouldn’t call and text and fuss so much. 

He doesn’t think too hard about the flip side - whether he likes her. When _that _particular question pops into his brain the answer he comes up with is that he likes what she gives him, which, he knows, is a cop-out. 

Myra is stability. He needs her, and that is what she does for him. 

He stares down at the phone a moment longer, stares into the little bright light that indicates it’s powering up - then he shudders, inexplicably, and turns the phone on. Like ripping off a band-aid, he thinks. 

It’s not like he has any choice, of course. He is an adult. His life is in New York. But it’s nice to pretend, just for one more night; to be surrounded by his friends, to remember how they are brave, how they love each other; to remain swallowed by the warm fantasy just a little longer. 

And so Eddie turns his phone on, but doesn’t look at the messages.

They get ready for bed, sharing the space without too much effort. Richie brushes his teeth whilst Eddie peers at the fading scar on his cheek in the bathroom mirror, wondering if Myra will notice - then flinches when Richie flicks water at him from his toothbrush. 

“What the fuck! Rich, that’s disgusting! What are you, five years old?”

Richie just laughs at him, then screeches when Eddie licks his finger and shoves it in Richie’s ear. 

In the bedroom behind them, Eddie’s phone trembles as it fills with the texts and voicemails he’s received and not opened over the last couple of days.

Eddie changes into his own pyjamas that night, carefully folding the underwear and the Guns ‘n’ Roses shirt he’d borrowed and placing them in Richie’s messy bag. He resists the urge to repack it - the thing is bursting at the seams, so haphazardly are its contents jammed in there.

From the bed, Richie says, “Are you wearing actual pyjamas, Eds?”

Eddie scowls at him, standing up. “Yeah. What’s so fucking funny, dickwad?”

Richie is grinning, long legs stretched out before him. He’s still wearing that fucking roach shirt, and a pair of boxers patterned with tiny silhouettes of sausage dogs. Eddie forces his gaze to focus on Richie’s face, on his stupid big glasses. 

Richie doesn’t say anything; just goes on grinning like an idiot. 

Eddie says, “I hardly think you’re in a position to be criticising people’s fashion choices.”

Richie says, “I’m not criticising. I just think it’s cute.”

And there - another memory. Multiple memories. Young Richie pinching his cheek; ruffling his hair. _Cute, cute, cute! _The way he’d shoved the other boy off him, face flushed, frightened by the way the words had tickled at his insides; the way they had made his breath stop and catch. 

Boys shouldn’t be cute. 

Men aren’t cute. 

He wants to tell Richie this, but he can’t. 

He needs to say something, he thinks, instead of just standing there like an idiot, mouth half-open. But Richie seems to have lost interest; is looking away from Eddie and back down at his phone. 

It’s disturbing, really, the way he has these moments of extreme anxiety around Richie; the way he falls so still under his gaze, but then the moment the other man looks away he instantly wants that attention back. He remembers feeling that way back then too, all those years ago, both loving and hating when Richie’s laser focus zeroed in on him; how in quieter moments when Richie was concentrating on something else, was talking to one of the others, or listening to his walkman, or reading a comic book, he’d get this itch beneath his skin, this insistent compulsion to start riling the other boy up, to poke and to prod, and sometimes he’d wondered if Richie had felt the same way. 

It’s surprising how, over twenty years later, he still feels the same - and yet, at the same time, it isn’t surprising at all. 

In a way, it’s kind of comforting, despite the way Richie’s attention burns and stings; heats him from the inside out. 

He moves around to the other, unoccupied side of the bed, and lays down. 

Across the room, on the chest of drawers, his phone buzzes. Eddie is grateful he’d thought to put it on vibrate, rather than leaving the sound on, once he’d left New York. 

At his side, Richie smells of soap, of the cigarette Bev had smoked on the walk back to the Townhouse, of sweat, and, even more faintly, whatever detergent he washes his clothes with. 

Eddie thinks about that; about Richie, back home in LA. 

He wonders what his house is like; how he lives. Does he have a boyfriend? A pet? Does he live alone? What is his routine like? Eddie imagines him waking up at midday every day; slobbing about his house; not falling asleep until hours after midnight. Will he just fall back into his old rhythms, his old life, exactly where he left off?

He wonders how _he _will go back. If he even can. 

This time, he’s going to remember.

How do you move past what’s happened to them?

He wants to talk to someone about it - wants to talk to Richie - but Richie, weirdly, seems kind of unwilling to do so. He wants to push it back down again, Eddie thinks, forget about the clown, and the horrible violence, and what had happened to Eddie, and to Stan - and Eddie gets it, he does, he’s nothing if not the master of repression - but the feelings are there, and they’ve always been there, the _fear, _though he’s never known what, exactly, the fear was of, and why it was so all-encompassing, so consuming, and now he has an answer, and it’s as terrifying as it is relieving - 

Only Richie doesn’t seem to think so. 

Nevertheless, he wants Richie to talk to him - wants to talk through their fear together. Perhaps, that way, they can both be less scared. 

He thinks Richie’s scared, anyhow. That’s the only reason he can think of as to why Richie won’t discuss what’s happened.

It’s a crazy notion, really - Richie Tozier, being scared - but there is no other appropriate reaction to what they’ve experienced, Eddie supposes. Richie is so brave, he’s probably never felt like this before - or at least, not since that summer.

Hesitantly, he glances up at the man beside him. 

Richie is still focused on his phone, lips slightly pursed. 

Eddie lays still, thinking, watching. After a while, he says, “Hey, Rich.”

Richie tosses his phone onto the nightstand with nowhere near enough care. No wonder the edges of it are all chipped, Eddie thinks. 

“Yeah?”

Eddie hesitates. “What - what did you see in the Deadlights?”

A moment. Richie goes very still beside him. 

Eddie thinks about what Bev saw; how it must have felt for her to see all of her friends die, and straight away he feels cruel and insensitive. He’s just about to open his mouth and apologise, tell Richie that it doesn’t matter, when Richie says, “Hey, Eds, d’you wanna know how I knew I was gay?”

Eddie wasn’t expecting that. He says, “Uh.”

Richie says, “It was your mom.”

Eddie blinks at him. 

Richie rolls onto his side, props himself up on his elbow, expression serious.

“She ruined me for all other women. Once I’d had her, I was like, wow, nowhere else to go from here, female-wise. Can’t do any better than that. So I figured I’d better start fucking dudes instead.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Eddie says. 

Richie cackles at him. 

“Fuck you!”

“Alright, alright,” Richie says. “It wasn’t like that. I mean - she _did _ruin me for women, but it was more like, I was so horrified by what I saw, I thought, I’m never sticking my dick in anything even remotely like that -”

Eddie sits up, hits him in the face with his pillow. 

“Argh! Eds -”

“You are - forty years old - stop - with the mom jokes,” Eddie yells, punctuating every couple of words with a smack of the pillow.

Richie falls onto his back, waving his hands effectively in the air, choking on his own laughter. When Eddie finally lets up, his glasses are hanging off one ear. It’s irritatingly endearing. 

“Alright,” Richie says, “I’m sorry, Eds. Guess I kinda deserved that.”

“You guess?”

Richie sits up, adjusting the frames. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He looks at Eddie for a beat too long.

Eddie shifts his legs beneath the duvet, settles down. 

Richie looks across the room at the TV, but his eyes are unfocused. He looks like he’s thinking about something. Eddie tries not to stare at him; tries not to notice the stubble on his straight jawline; the way his hair is sticking straight up on the back of his head, just as curly and messy as it had been when they were young; tries not to think about the way his hazel eyes crinkle at the corners when he’s laughing; his stupid sideburns. 

He tips his head back into the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. It’s weird to think that he’ll be back in New York this time tomorrow. It doesn’t quite feel real - but then again, nothing has, since he opened his eyes and found himself outside the Well House. He’s still waiting for the carpet to be tugged from beneath his feet - though, admittedly, it’s rare that he doesn’t feel that kind of general anxiety. But - never like this. Never about his very status as a living, breathing human being. 

He curls his toes beneath the duvet; it’s just another thing to add to his list of things not to think about. 

Beside him, Richie breathes in, slowly. 

“You - you wanna know how I really knew? That I, you know, liked guys? _Like _guys, I mean?”

Eddie turns to look at him. He’d sort of expected that Richie would still be looking away - looking at the television - but he isn’t. He’s looking at Eddie. His gaze is painfully direct and insistent, despite the way his Adam’s apple is bobbing in his throat, and his lips have thinned, and his cheeks are pale. 

He hesitates. He isn’t sure why Richie is trying to tell him this; why Richie came out to him last night, his eyes ringed red, dark circles so deep he looked like he’d been bruised when apparently he hadn’t breathed a word about it to the others, when he wasn’t out publicly, when his manager didn’t know, and he seemingly didn’t want anybody else to know.

Of course, he doesn’t mind - it’s quite flattering, really, to be entrusted with this kind of personal information, it’s just... just strange, is all, when they’d only remembered that the other existed a matter of days ago. Still, he thinks, it doesn’t really feel like that. He knows they’ve missed out on years of friendship, of milestones together, and it _hurts, _that knowledge, of course it does, but it also feels like they’re just picking up exactly where they’d left off; as though the time sent apart was only a matter of days, or weeks, at a push, not _years_. It’s easy, between them - between all of them. It always was. 

He says, “Um, okay. I mean, if you want to tell me. You don’t have to. If it’s - if it’s not - it can’t be easy.”

Richie’s gaze is too intense. Eddie feels like he’s on a stage, caught in a bright spotlight. 

Richie breathes in slowly. For a brief moment, Eddie swears he’s hesitating; that he won’t say anything. Then he says, “It was you.”

Eddie blinks. 

“You were my big gay awakening.”

Eddie stares at him, open-mouthed. “Okay, now I _know _you’re just teasing.”

“Am not.” Richie seems to relax a little. He grins at him, leaning back down into the bed and propping himself up on his elbow. “You and those little red shorts.”

“Shut up!”

“They were sexy. Think you’d ever wear them again?”

“I was _thirteen! _Stop calling shorts I wore when I was _thirteen _sexy, you _freak_!”

“Thirteen-year-old me thought they were sexy,” Richie says. 

“Thirteen-year-old you thought everything was sexy,” Eddie mumbles, and Richie laughs.

They lapse into a comfortable silence. Richie is still resting on one elbow, grinning like an idiot, apparently lost in the memories of Eddie’s ridiculous shorts. 

It’s fucking _embarassing_, so Eddie covers his face with his hands.

A moment passes, then Richie, apropos of nothing, suddenly says, “I thought - I thought maybe I’d gotten over your, uh...your shorts, y’know, when Mike called and I remembered. Everything. Everyone. But, um…” he hesitates, and Eddie hears him breathe in, slowly. He sounds nervous. “I...I saw you that first night, at the restaurant, wearing that ugly-ass polo shirt, and I...God, Eds...I felt like I was a kid again. I was fucking…”

The world, all of a sudden, screeches to a halt. Eddie feels like his heart might have stopped. He can hardly breathe. He feels hot and cold and he doesn’t think he can move. 

There’s motion at his side, and he realises Richie is sitting back up. 

“I know this is a real jerk move of me, when you’re heading home tomorrow, and you’re - you’re married, you know, to a woman and everything, but God, I...I can’t…”

Eddie uncovers his face, stares at Richie’s back. 

Richie is saying, “I can’t go back to LA...I can’t say goodbye without telling you. I thought - I thought you were fucking _dead_, Eds, and I - I wanted to fucking _die_, I just...I’m so fucking sorry for dumping this all on you, and I’m not asking for anything, I swear, I just have to - have to tell you, I can’t _not _say it -”

Eddie says, “Say what?” His voice is barely a whisper. His head is spinning. His body is numb. “Say what, Rich?”

Richie turns, and he looks so tired, and so defeated that _Eddie _wants to cry. “I’m head over goddamn heels for you, Eds. Always have been.”

Eddie feels like he won’t ever breathe again. Like he won’t ever move again, or speak again. His head feels like it has filled with blood. He can hear it pounding in his ears. Of all the things he’d thought they might talk about on their last night in Derry, this is absolutely not one of them. He stares at Richie, mouth open. 

“You’re,” he says, then he can’t say anything else. He wants to ask Richie if he’s joking, if he’s teasing him. But he looks at Richie’s face; at the bags beneath his eyes and the lines beside his mouth, and how he hasn’t shaved in a day or two. And he knows. He knows he’s not. 

Richie says, “I’m - I’m in love with you, Eddie.” He hesitates, looks down at the mattress beneath them. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie’s mind is spinning out of control, but it’s spinning through molasses, through treacle, through mud, and he can’t get a grip on any of his thoughts. 

Richie Tozier loves him. Richie Tozier is _in love _with him. 

Eddie doesn’t think that anybody has ever said that to him before. Come to think of it, he doesn’t think anybody has ever _been _in love with him before. 

Myra, for all her insistence that Eddie tells her he loves her when he leaves the house or hangs up the phone, never says it back. She never asks him to say it any other time, either. It exists as a good luck charm, he’s thought several times over the few years they’ve been married, but then he supposes that is how _he’s _always thought of it too. 

Saying “I love you” to someone has always been the same as a goodbye for Eddie, or a hello, or else it was a placation, a means of ending a fight, a de-escalation. 

His mother - he finds, yet again, that he doesn’t want to think about his mother.

She told him she loved him plenty. 

She smothered him with _I love yous. _

It’s different how Richie says it. 

It’s dangerous, he knows it is, thinking about this, because it conjures up all kinds of associations he’s usually so skilled at burying, has been burying since childhood, since he found himself looking a little too long at the other boys on the playground instead of the girls, since he saw the word AIDs on the front pages of the all the newspapers outside the convenience store, since he spotted the blue-pen-scribble _Eddie Kaspbrak is a faggot _on the wall of the boys’ bathroom in middle school, and, in a blind panic, washed it off halfway through Mr. Betancourt’s third period English class with a sodden paper towel and shitty liquid soap, terrified someone would see but even more terrified that perhaps - perhaps it was true.

Because the reality was, when they’d all hung out together at Bill or Ben or Richie’s houses and watched _Star Wars_, he’d barely noticed Carrie Fisher in her gold bikini. Instead, it had been Harrison Ford and his sly half-smile he hadn’t been able to look away from. It had made his stomach drop, he remembers, and, infuriatingly, horrifyingly, sometimes it would do the same thing when Richie had teased him, when they’d been sat side-by-side beneath the summer sun and their bare knees had brushed up against one another, or when he lost his gloves one winter, walking home from school, and Richie had given him his without a second thought, shoving his own pink hands into his pockets.

He hadn’t let himself think about it - the other big _It _in his life - not at all, not ever, and eventually not thinking about things had become second nature, and because everything else he experienced was underwhelming and like moving through toffee, he’d thought that the big L word was supposed to be like that too. 

He doesn’t remember his dad, and his mom had rarely talked about him, so Eddie wasn’t actually sure if it was something that happened to real people. The adults of their childhood town had wandered round with dull eyes, barely looking at one another, and he supposes that by the time he’d escaped it had become imprinted on him - that it wasn’t really like it was in the movies, and that nobody _really _felt that way, and that as long as it was with someone of the opposite sex, it was fine.

The way Richie’s looking at him now, though - that’s not _fine_. That’s not settling. That’s not going through the motions, or a placation, or a good luck charm. The way he’d said it wasn’t just a saying, it wasn’t just words. It’s in his eyes - the way he’s looking at Eddie now, like there’s something about him that’s worth looking at, like there’s something beautiful and precious in him, and Eddie can’t help but think that this is the least _fine _thing he’s ever experienced. 

Richie _loves _him. 

Eddie feels dizzy. 

Richie says, “Eds, please say something. I’m sorry. I’m just - fuck, I’m so sorry, Eddie -”

Eddie says, “Say it again?”

Richie stares at him like he’s grown a second head. He says, “Wh-what?”

“Say it again?” Eddie says. His face is burning. He feels dizzy. 

Richie continues to stare at him, open-mouthed. In the low yellow light of the table lamp, his hazel eyes glisten. 

Eddie has never allowed himself to think about that before - the colour of Richie’s eyes, caught somewhere between green and blue and brown. Like everything to do with Richie, it is too much - too full of colour - a cacophony of loud, clashing brightness. 

He’d noticed it - the colour of Richie’s eyes - when they’d first met though, little kids squabbling over crayons in a classroom that smelled of paint and chalk dust, and all the summers they’d spent together, outside in the warm sunlight, and the second they’d sat down at the Jade of the Orient and he’d gotten his first good look at something in over twenty years.

He feels like he’s spent years blindfolded, and only now has the cloth been ripped away.

He says, “Please?”

Richie swallows, slowly. Then he says, “I love you, Eddie. I’m - I’m in love with you.”

The words wash over him. Eddie has no idea how he didn’t know until now how parched he was. How he needed to hear someone say it. 

Richie says, “Eds,” and Eddie flinches, because Richie has moved closer to him, and his hand is touching Eddie’s face, on his good side, lightly, so lightly…

It’s like static, the feeling, and it makes some kind of crazy current run up and down his spine, makes every hair on his body stand on end, and then Richie moves his thumb, wiping away the dampness on his cheek, and Eddie realises he’s crying. 

“Baby,” Richie says, questioning, comforting, and then his face turns scarlet, like he hadn’t meant to say that out loud, like it was an accident; and if it was an accident, in that moment Eddie wants nothing more than for terrible accident after terrible accident to befall him every moment of every day for the rest of his fucking life. 

He breathes in, suddenly, comprehending the fact that he hasn’t drawn breath in a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, an age - and the sound of it is amplified by the proximity of Richie’s big palm to his mouth, and he _hears _that he’s trembling, but it’s okay, because Richie is trembling too, he’s close enough for Eddie to see it, and feel it through the springs of the crappy mattress - 

And then Richie says, “Eddie, I’m going to kiss you now.” And he looks at him, and it’s so much, it’s so much it physically hurts to make eye contact, to gaze into all that violent colour, and Eddie can’t speak, his throat is so dry he can’t say a thing, but he can nod, he can nod…

He jerks when Richie’s lips touch his own, feather-light and uncertain, and he hates himself for it - but then Richie’s other hand comes up, fingers resting lightly against his jaw, steadying him, reassuring him, and isn’t that what Richie’s always done best for him?

It’s like a relief - a release - to realise that; to be able to admit it. 

He doesn’t know if he’s still crying, if his eyes are shut, if he’s making any noise - but Richie is holding onto his face like it’s a jewel, like it is something beautiful and valuable and wonderful, and just for a moment, Eddie feels like it might be. Richie’s fingers move infinitesimally against him, touching his hair, the curve of his ear, and each of these little moments of contact send Eddie’s heart ricocheting around his torso like a stray bullet, like a caged bird, like a mad thing unleashed, and he can’t think anymore, can’t think of a single thing other than how warm Richie’s hands are, how gentle his lips feel, how his stubble is scraping against his chin and his glasses are pressing up against his brow bone and the side of his nose. 

It’s so much - so much - and it’s nowhere near enough. 

It’s twenty-seven years’ worth of longing finally being released, and it makes him shake, the weight of it, all that heavy time…

“Rich,” he says, against Richie’s mouth, “Rich,” and he doesn’t know why he’s saying it, but he _has _to, he has to let Richie know…

And Richie moans against him, and his arms are wrapping around Eddie fully now, all the way around him, holding him close, keeping him safe, and it’s the best thing Eddie’s ever felt. 

His head is filled with nothing, blissful nothing - nothing but white noise, and the longer Richie kisses him, the more empty he becomes. He feels light, like all this time he’s been dragging something behind him, something hard and heavy, and with his lips Richie has worn away at the string binding that rock-like thing to him. 

He raises his own hands, and he doesn’t know what to do with them, at first, but they find Richie’s shoulders easily, curl into the soft fabric of his ridiculous roach of the week t-shirt, and it makes Richie _hmmm _into his mouth, tighten his grip, pull him even closer. 

He wants everything, all of a sudden, more of it, of this, and Eddie usually doesn’t let himself feel or think like this, _want _things, but he _does, _the truth is he _does_, desperately, below the surface, and all he can do is think about how Richie said he loved him, how Richie _loves _him, has always loved him, and it makes his whole body hot and full in a way he’s never felt before.

He wants.

God, he _wants_.

Voice muffled by Richie’s lips, he says, “I want - I want -”

Richie, pulling back a little, says, “Yeah? What do you want, baby?”

His voice is rough and cracked, and it makes Eddie feel like he did when he was a kid watching _Jurassic Park, _staring at Jeff Goldblum’s tanned, exposed neck, or _Twin Peaks_ after his mother had fallen asleep, with the volume way down low, his lip catching between his teeth and his thighs clenching together whenever Bobby Briggs appeared on screen. 

He says, “I…I…” but he can’t put it into words, the enormity of what he wants, and anyway Richie is then kissing him elsewhere - on his chin, his cheekbone, his jaw. His mouth hovers close to Eddie’s ear a moment, then he kisses him there too, and then he kisses him on the triangle of skin between his earlobe and the corner of his jaw and his neck, and Eddie can’t help but dig his fingers into Richie’s shoulders, hard, which is lucky, because a moment later he’s tipping backwards, Richie’s hands at his waist, and then there’s a pillow behind his head, and Richie is staring down at him, looking somewhat surprised, somewhat nervous, as though he wasn’t the one who pushed him back onto the bed.

Richie says, “Are you - is this okay?” and Eddie says, “God, yes,” and he knows, he just _knows _the second the words are out of his mouth what Richie’s going to say -

And just as predicted, Richie grins, wide, and says, “Just Richie is okay, Eds,” and Eddie kicks him, and Richie is laughing as he presses his lips to Eddie’s neck again. 

That sends him a little loopy - Richie’s mouth up against his neck, the slow caress of his lips, the faint swipe of the tip of his tongue, and every so often, the tantalising cut of teeth - makes his hips twitch and his breath catch in the back of his throat, and it takes Richie lowering his own body down, down, even closer, the weight of him across Eddie’s chest and the length of his leg caught between Eddie’s thighs for him to realise how fucking aroused he is. 

And of course he is, how could he not be, with Richie above him like that, with Richie’s mouth moving against his neck - nobody has ever kissed his neck before, he thinks, distantly - how could he have spent so long trying to convince himself that he just _didn’t like _intimacy, that he wasn’t interested in kissing or sex when _this _exists, when Richie was always capable of holding and touching and kissing him like this?

The thought is as upsetting as it is freeing. But Richie’s mouth is still on his neck, and the feel of it makes his eyelids flutter, makes him sigh, and that in turn makes Richie moan low in the back of his throat, and his fingers tighten their grip on Eddie’s body. 

He’s wanted this for so long - the weight of another man’s body on top of him, big hands on his ribs and thighs, rough stubble against his own jaw - and now he’s getting it, he’s finally getting it, and it’s with Richie, Richie who he spent so long thinking about during his childhood, staring into the darkness of his own bedroom, legs and arms ramrod straight against the mattress, feeling ashamed and confused and dirty, Richie who loves him, and it makes him shake, the fact that _this _is his biggest turn-on, that _this _is what’s making his thighs tremble and his body flush with heat - the fact that Richie _loves _him…

He’s not the only one who’s turned on, he realises, running his fingertips slowly up Richie’s back, touching the ends of his curly hair. Richie is hard and hot against his leg, and it’s terrifying, it’s overwhelming, but it’s _good _too, so good - he feels stupid for not knowing that something as seemingly straightforward as kissing could feel this good.

Richie is moving a hand up his leg, higher and higher, up to his inner thigh, and just as Eddie is feeling like it’s too much, like he’s going to have to pull away, Richie is removing his mouth from Eddie’s neck and saying, “Is - is this...can I touch you?” His voice is low and rough, and it makes something start flipping and squirming inside of him. 

Eddie says, “You are touching me.” He’s surprised by his voice - how ravaged he sounds. 

“You know what I mean,” Richie says, and his face swims into view. He’s grinning, and his cheeks are flushed, and his hair is tangled in knots and sticking straight up. Eddie thinks he’s the most handsome man he’s ever seen. “Can I touch your dick?”

Something about the way he says it freezes him; brings his stomach up into the back of his mouth. He’s made it too real, and all of a sudden, Eddie isn’t sure if he wants Richie to do that. He tries to speak, but he can’t get the words out.

Richie seems to know what he means, anyway. “Hey,” he says, and his hand leaves Eddie’s thigh and comes up to cup his face again. “Hey. It’s okay. We don’t have to - can I kiss you again?”

Eddie nods, and Richie smiles, and kisses him on the lips, not the open-mouth kisses he gave him before, but something quick, soft, sweet, and Eddie feels so full of - something - he thinks he might burst.

All the men he’s looked at over the years, actors in movies and on TV shows and men he went to college with and men he’s passed on the street - usually tall men with scruffy hair and five o’clock shadow and more often than not, glasses - all the men he’s followed with his eyes and then felt intense shame and fear over immediately afterwards, even though nothing had ever happened with them, all of those glances and that longing and anxiety, all that was leading to here, this night, on this bed, with Richie in Derry, and all that had led from Richie, in Derry, in his weird bright shirts, with his big hands and big feet and dirt on his nose, and knees and shoes scuffed, Richie, who was too loud and too bright and whom it had often hurt to look at - it’s all culminating here and it all started here too, and Eddie can’t help but imagine time as a vortex, a wild spiral rushing inwards to here and from here, always Richie, always Derry…

There’s a buzzing noise coming from somewhere close by - faint but just irritating enough for him to pause the movements of his lips - and as Richie pulls back, propping himself up on both elbows, staring down at Eddie like he’s trying to memorise every line on his face, every hair on his head, Eddie realises it is his phone, charging on the dresser, and apparently ringing. 

He glances at it - sees it lighting up in time with each vibration. It’s not possible - the phone is on the other side of the room - but he thinks he can feel each pulse of it deep within his bones. 

Richie follows his gaze across the room, then stiffens, and looks back down at him. He’s far too close, and miles away all at once. “Um,” he says, “Do you - do you need to get that?”

He should, Eddie thinks, he should get it - the longer he puts off speaking to Myra the worse things will be when he finally does - but more than anything in that moment, he wants to pull the blankets over their heads, and pull Richie back down to his mouth and his neck, and tangle their legs together in the darkness, and forget.

“Um,” he says. 

Then the phone stops ringing, and the decision is made for him. 

He feels strange; shivery and too hot and too cold all at the same time, and he wonders vaguely if he’s coming down with something. 

His phone buzzes again, just once, on top of the dresser, and then it falls still and silent once more. 

A voicemail, probably. 

Eddie swallows; doesn’t miss the way Richie’s eyes flicker down to catch the movement. 

“We should,” he says, and then he doesn’t say anything else, hoping that Richie will jump in and finish the sentence for him; break the tension that’s descended upon them. 

But he doesn’t. For once in his life, Richie Tozier stays totally silent. 

Eddie says, reluctantly, “Maybe we should go to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He doesn’t move from where he’s hovering above Eddie. 

Half of Eddie wishes Richie would lower his body towards him; kiss him again, and never stop. And the other half is so utterly frozen in fear he thinks he never wants to see the other man again. That thought almost brings tears to his eyes. He blinks against it, hard. 

Richie shuffles backwards a little, on his hands and knees. Then he rolls over slowly, onto his back, as though he is just waking up. He says, “Hey, Eds.”

Eddie looks at him. He feels sick. 

“Yeah?” he says.

Richie looks at him for a long, long moment. Then he says, “Nothing,”

“Oh,” Eddie says. 

They stare at one another over the expanse of the bed. 

Eddie wants Richie to say whatever it was he had been going to say. It doesn’t matter what it is; he just likes hearing Richie talk. He wants to say something too - something that matters - but he doesn’t know what, and he certainly doesn’t know how. He turns onto his side, back towards Richie. 

After a moment, Richie says, “Hey, Eds - I’m sorry.” His voice sounds like there is cotton in his throat. 

Eddie rolls back over. Richie is still laying on his back, staring straight up. His hands are folded across his stomach. 

Eddie says, “Rich, there’s - you don’t have to apologise. I’m not -”

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what he’s not. 

He reaches out, beneath the bed covers, and tangles their fingers together. 

Richie flinches - but then he looks over at Eddie, and he doesn’t seem mad. He smiles, just a little bit, and his hand tightens around Eddie’s. 

“You okay?” Richie says. 

Eddie says “Yeah,” even though in truth he’s not; not really. He doesn’t think he’s been okay for a long time. 

Then Richie leans towards him, and brushes the hair that’s flopped across his forehead back, his touch feather-light. “Let’s go to sleep,” he says, softly, tenderly, and Eddie aches.

He closes his eyes against the tingle of Richie’s fingers against his skin; squeezes his hand once. Then he turns away, curls back up on his side, and Richie releases his hand. 

He almost gasps out loud when Richie kisses him on the shoulder, through the soft material of his pyjama shirt. “Things’ll be better in the morning,” Richie says. 

*

Things are not better in the morning. 

Eddie wakes with a start, as though somebody has shaken him awake, or yelled in his ear, but when he sits up and looks around, the room is dark and still. 

Richie is still fast asleep at his side, mouth open, motionless. Eddie wants to furl his body up close to him; rest his head on his chest; go back to sleep. 

But then there is a low, buzzing whine from the other side of the room, and Eddie suddenly knows why he’d woken up.

He wonders if this is the first time his wife has called him this morning. 

He stares at the phone, watching it tremble on the edge of the dresser, until it falls still and silent once again. 

Today is his last day in Derry, he thinks, suddenly.

Today, he will drive to Bangor International Airport, and get on his Delta flight, and sit in his window seat and watch as Maine falls away beneath him, and New York City rises up to pull him down. And then he will collect his car from the parking lot, and drive back to his two-bed apartment in Queens, and try to dodge Myra’s questions and shield the scars on his body from her anxious hands. 

Another long buzz - his phone is ringing once more. 

He gets up, his feet cold on the threadbare carpets. The phone is like a fishing line, snaring him, drawing him across the room and back from Derry, back to the city where the buildings are too high and press in around him too tightly.

He can’t not answer the phone, though, no matter how much he wants to. He doesn’t know how. 

He picks it up. It feels heavier than he remembers in the palm of his hand. 

Quickly, he swipes the green icon to answer the call. It will be easier, he thinks, in the long run, to just get this over with.

“Hello?” he says.

“Eddie!” Myra’s voice is frantic. “Eddie, is that you?”

“Of course it is - who else would it be?”

“Eddie, where are you?” Myra demands. “What the hell’s going on? What are you doing? I’ve been out of my mind with worry, I’ve been calling and calling and calling and you haven’t answered any of my texts -”

“I know, Myra.” It’s a risk to interrupt her, but she has questions, and he needs to get the answers to her as quickly as he can. “I’m sorry -”

“I called the police, but they told me that you were an adult and if you wanted to leave then you could, can you believe - I told them you could be lying dead in a ditch -”

Behind him, Richie sighs in his sleep; rolls over. Eddie makes his way quickly across the room to the bathroom, keeping his voice quiet.

“You called the _police?”_

“I had no idea where you were, Eddie!” Myra cries. “You never explained to me - just barrelled in, said you were leaving, never told me where - how is that _fair?”_

Eddie closes the bathroom door behind him, hoping that the walls are thick enough to block out the sound of their conversation. 

“I _did _tell you you, though, I’m in Derry.”

Myra says, “Derry? Where is Derry? What are you talking about? Why are you there? Eddie -”

“I told you when I was leaving,” Eddie says, because he _did, _he knows he did tell her -

“Don’t shout at me!” Myra says, loudly.

Eddie doesn’t think he was shouting, but maybe he was. It doesn’t matter. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. I just - Derry’s in Maine. It’s where I grew up. There was an emergency.”

“What emergency?” Myra says, and she sounds even more hysterical now. Usually at this point in their conversations, Eddie’s wound-up too, feeding off her anxiety, spooked by her paranoia, and they end up panicking together. But today, this morning, he’s - flat. He still feels it - that sense of dread, that distant unhappiness that he’s usually so good at forcing down - but more than anything, he just feels sad. 

Over the phone, Myra is saying, “Eddie! _Eddie! _Are you still there? What emergency?”

Eddie says, “It was - my friends. Something happened to, um, some - one of my friends. I had to-”

“What friends?” Myra demands. 

“You don’t know them,” Eddie says, “we - we lost touch. I went to school with them.” There’s a loose thread down the side seam of his pyjama pants, he notices. He begins to pick and pull at it. 

Myra says, “If you lost touch why did you have to drop everything to go - gallivanting halfway across the country for an _emergency? _An emergency you still haven’t fully explained to me, Eddie!”

Maine is hardly halfway across the country from New York, but Eddie doesn’t touch on that. He knows it’s pointless. 

He says, “Myra, I’m sorry -”

“It’s just _not fair_ on me Eddie, I was so frightened -”

So was I, Eddie thinks, but he doesn’t say that. He can’t even begin to think about how he would explain what’s happened to Myra - he doesn’t want to tell her about Stan, and he has no idea how to explain Derry, even without the weird supernatural shit - the way its inhabitants move slowly and sluggishly about its streets, eyes glazed over; the way the town is asleep; the kind of people it breeds, who don’t care at best, are vicious and cruel and uncaring at worst. 

There’s no way he’s even touching on Pennywise. One mention of that and she’d be calling an ambulance and demanding he be committed. She’s already tried to convince him to see a therapist several times, off the back of his night terrors, which objectively is probably not a bad idea, but when he’d finally agreed and gone along, just to placate her, he hadn’t been able to speak. The therapist had asked him about himself; his relationship with his wife; his childhood. And, true to form, Eddie had frozen. The idea of someone rooting around in his brain and telling him why he was the way he was petrified him. He’d been worried he might slip up - say something about Myra, or about his mother, that the therapist might have misinterpreted, or about himself, and the way he couldn’t help but look at men, the way sex gave him vague feelings of fear and disgust - and then he’d worried that once everything was laid bare, and he was forced to confront himself, he would see nothing in the mirror; just the shell of a man who had never made a decision or had an independent thought once in his life; an assortment of clothing with nothing inside it. 

He hadn’t wanted that. Hadn’t wanted to be emptied and hollowed, to have to confront the very real possibility that there was nothing at all to him; that he fundamentally had no notion of who he was; that at his core was just a knot of borrowed thoughts and opinions that never really belonged to him. 

But he knows now - thanks to Mike, thanks to his friends, thanks to Derry, and even thanks to that odious clown - knows all these things about himself, sees the angles and edges of his life in a bright cast of white light, and he knows what he might have been, and what he might - _might _\- become. And he knows that something’s got to change. So, cutting Myra off mid-rant, he finds himself suddenly saying, “Myra, I - I might need a couple more days here. In Derry. I was going to fly home today, but -”

Myra says, “What?” She doesn’t sound frantic anymore. Her voice is low. 

He swallows; reaches out a hand to grip the towel rail. He says, “I might - there’s some stuff I want to tie up here, a few loose ends. I just -”

“Eddie, you can’t.”

Eddie says, “I-”

“You can’t. It’s not fair, Eddie, you left without breathing a word to me of where you were going or what you were doing, and it’s not fair of you to do that to me, to treat me like that. You always brush me off, Eddie, you brush my feelings off like they’re _nothing_, and it’s not fair!”

She’s probably right, Eddie thinks. He’s pretty sure he’d told Myra where he was going before he left for Derry, but he does have a tendency to brush her off - he knows he does, he had done so when he’d been on the phone to her right before getting Mike’s call, and hadn’t he had his phone switched off the entire time he’d been in Maine? Then he’d fucking - _kissed _Richie last night - kissed him without even a thought of Myra entering his head. He’s a _cheater_. He rubs his free hand over his face; catches sight of his own face, sweaty and pulled tight across his skull in the mirror over the sink. He turns away. The guilt is cannibalising him. 

“Besides,” Myra’s saying, and Eddie sits down on the side of the tub, wrapping an arm around his stomach, “what will you do about work? What have you told them? Are you taking time off unpaid? How long will they let you do that for? They won’t let you stay off indefinitely, you know that -”

“I know,” Eddie hears himself say softly, “I know.”

“This emergency sounds like something bad,” Myra says, and Eddie wants nothing more than to curl in on himself and cry. “Eddie, I understand you want to take some time away from work if things are getting bad, but you can’t shut me out. You need me. Let me help you.”

Eddie closes his eyes, bile rising in his throat. He wants Myra to stop speaking; to stop telling him what he wants and needs, but he can’t. He can’t do anything. 

It doesn’t matter what he told her about staying in Derry a little longer. He’s not going to do that. It’s not going to happen. They’re going to talk a little longer, and Eddie is going to hang up the phone, and return home to New York, the weight in his stomach heavier than ever before. 

He knows this routine; knows where the path leads as well as he knows the medication routine he’s followed every day since before he can remember.

“You need to come home, Eddie,” Myra says, firmly. 

“I - I can’t -”

“What will you do, Eddie,” Myra says. “What will you do, if you stay there? I know you. You’re hiding from your problems. Sooner or later you’ll have to go back to work, if you don’t want to be fired. And where are you staying? A hotel? You know how dirty those places are - you’re going to make yourself sick. Come home, Eddie, please, don’t leave me alone like this. We can - we can go somewhere nice, a health retreat, but you have to come home. You said you were going to come home today - so come home. Come home. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

Weakly, Eddie says, “My car’s already there.”

Myra says, “I’ll get a cab.”

There’s nothing he can say to argue with that. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Eddie,” Myra says, her voice sharpened, made tinny by the phone. “Come back.”

It’s hard to speak - his throat is full of fluid - but he manages it. “Okay,” he tells her, “Okay. I’ll come back.”

When he finally emerges from the bathroom, Richie is awake.

He’s fully clothed too, which Eddie had not expected, sat on the end of the bed, watching TV. He’s sitting stiffly, and still.

Eddie wants to go and sit down next to him. 

He forces himself to remain on the opposite side of the room. 

The local news is on; onscreen a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair is talking about a young man who’s apparently been fished out of the Derry canal, miraculously still alive after being brutally attacked by a gang of youths several nights previous.

Eddie moves slowly around the room, gathering his things. 

The woman on the television says, “Deputy Brown, there’s been speculation that this attack was fuelled by homophobia - is this something that your investigation is looking into as a possible motive?”

On the bed, Richie breathes in sharply; turns the TV off. 

Eddie looks up at him from where he’s crouched beside his suitcases. 

Richie says, “Are you okay?”

Eddie blinks. “Um,” he says. “I - I’m fine.” He is fine. He is. Perhaps, he thinks, if he tells himself it enough he will be. That’s what cognitive behavioural therapy is, he thinks. You have to tell yourself the same thing over and over, and if you say it enough, you come to believe it. 

Richie licks his lips. “I, uh. Heard - was that your wife you were on the phone to?”

Eddie ducks his head. He can’t bear to look at Richie’s face. “Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I have to -” Eddie can’t finish the sentence. He tries again. “My flight -”

Richie seems to sag into the bed; Eddie sees it in his peripheral vision; hears the sound of the old springs sigh. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.” A moment passes. Eddie can feel his gaze on him, like he’s waiting for something. 

Then, at last, he stands up, stretches. 

Eddie keeps his eyes fixed on the zipper of his case; turns the sock he’s holding over and over in his hands. 

“I’m gonna, uh,” Richie says. He doesn’t finish his sentence. 

Eddie can’t move. Don’t go, he thinks, don’t go. And then he thinks, don’t let me go.

Behind him, the door opens, and closes. And Eddie is alone. 

*

Richie doesn’t know where he’s going, but he knows he needs to get out. 

Out of the room, of the hotel, of Derry. 

On the porch, he calls his agent. 

It’s just shy of 7 AM in Los Angeles, but Steve picks up after just two rings. Then again, Richie supposes he could still be in Chicago, tidying things up. He isn’t sure what the protocol is for managers whose clients have just up and vanished halfway through a show.

“Rich,” he says. He doesn’t sound happy. “Where the _fuck_ are you?”

Steve’s voice is like a rope back to his life on the West Coast; a lifeline. Richie grabs at it like a dying man. 

“Maine,” he says. “Can you get me a flight out of here?”

Steve says, “What the goddamn shit are you doing in Maine, Rich? You on drugs? You been drinking? I swear to fucking God, Richie, if -”

“I’m not - I’m not on drugs,” Richie says. “And I’ve not been drinking. I wish I had. Last night I had two glasses of red, man. Two!”

“Maine?” Steve says, like that’s all he cares about. In the background of the call, Richie hears a door slam; pictures Steve storming about his house like a thing possessed. 

“In Derry,” Richie says, and he rubs his hand through his hair. It’s tangled, and his fingers catch on a knot, making him wince. “The tiny-ass shithole I grew up in. The other night - in Chicago - you remember I got that phone call?”

Steve says, “Yeah, you puked down your chin backstage, bombed, and then fucked off out of there without so much as a fucking text. What the fuck, man?”

Richie says, “One of my best friends when I was a kid. I - it was a call from home - he killed himself.”

There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Richie closes his eyes against the morning light, tilts his head back. 

“Ah, shit,” Steve says, and he sounds genuinely sorry. “Ah, fuck. That’s rough, buddy. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Richie says, even though it isn’t.

Steve says, “You holding up okay?”

“Not really.”

“Fuck, man,” Steve says. “Fuck. I don’t know what to say.”

Richie says, “Can you get me a flight home?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, I’ll get Rosie on it. When do you wanna come back?”

“Today,” Richie says, “Soon as.”

“Okay. You need a car from the airport?”

“Yeah. Yeah, please.”

“Fuck,” Steve says again. “Richie, you fucker. Listen, you don’t have to come back right now, okay. You wanna stay where you are, I got it, don’t worry. I’ll talk to the venues.”

Richie says, “I want to come back. I hate this fucking place.”

“Alright,” Steve says, though he sounds a little hesitant. “Alright. We’ll get you a flight. I’ll send you the details. Goddamn, Rich, I wish you’d said something. You been online lately?”

“No,” Richie says. 

“All the rags’re saying you had a psychotic break,” Steve says. “Well, half of them are. The other half are saying you’re back on coke.”

Richie says, “I thought it was your job to stop them saying that shit?”

Steve says, “Yeah, well. I had no idea, did I? For all I knew they were right.” There’s a moment of silence. “You sure you’ll be okay, man?”

Richie isn’t, but he says, “Yeah,” anyway. 

“Alright. Listen, when I get into the office, I’ll get Rosie on it. I’ll get her to send you the details. If you need to talk -”

“I don’t,” Richie says, quickly. 

Warily, Steve says, “Alright. Fine. I want you to come see me tomorrow though, okay? We’ll get lunch. I’m buying, whatever you want.”

“Okay.”

“Jesus, man. Okay, I gotta go. Don’t forget about tomorrow. I’ll book somewhere. I’ll text you. If you don’t show, I swear I’ll hunt you down and skin you.”

Richie nods, remembers Steve can’t see him. “I’ll be there.” He thinks about telling Steve he’s gay; that if he has to make another joke about tits and pussy he might cry. He swallows the thought down. “Thanks, man.”

“It’s alright,” Steve says. “You take care, Rich. Call me when you get to the airport. And call me when you land. I don’t trust you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Richie hangs up. He feels hollow yet heavy. He supposes he should go back up to his room; start packing. 

Steve’s assistant is efficient. She’ll probably have his flight booked within the next hour.

He wonders vaguely how often flights heading west leave Bangor. He knows he’ll have to change in Philly. 

He sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

He doesn’t go back into the Townhouse.

The door opens behind him.

“Well, well,” says a voice. 

Despite himself, Richie can’t help but smile. 

“Hey, Bev,” he says. 

Bev looks beautiful, even this early in the morning, with no makeup on and half her hair up in a ponytail. But then again, Bev always looks beautiful. 

“What’re you doing out here, all on your lonesome?” she asks. 

Richie shrugs. 

Bev doesn’t push it. Instead, she sits down on the top step, digging out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her jacket pocket. 

“Want one?” she says. 

“I quit,” Richie tells her. 

Bev raises her eyebrows, but says nothing. 

Richie watches her put a cigarette to her lips; light up; inhale; breathe out spirals of smoke. 

He says, “Actually - can I bum one?”

Bev just smiles at him. “Richie Tozier,” she says, “you’ve never bought your own cigarettes in your damn life.” She gives him one anyway, and lights it for him when he sits down next to her. 

“Rich coming from you.” He remembers bouncing into the various convenience stores of Derry with her; making a racket and being a general nuisance in order to distract the staff working the tills so that Bev could sneakily slide boxes of Marlboros, Camels, cheap BICs into her pockets. He’d forgotten that, too; never realised how much he’d missed it until now. 

They smoke together in companionable silence. It’s good; Richie’s missed it, the burn in his lungs. 

“You doing okay?” she says, after a while.

“Yeah,” he says.

Bev gives him a long, careful look. “How’s Eddie?”

Richie stiffens. “I don’t know. Fine. He’s going back to New York today.”

“Ah,” Bev says. 

They don’t say anything else for almost a minute. Then Bev stubs what remains of her cigarette out on the side of the step, tosses the butt onto the sidewalk. “You know,” she says, “if there’s anything you wanna tell me, you can, you know.”

Her voice is gentle, and it infuriates Richie, the way it makes his throat tighten, his eyes sting. 

“There isn’t anything,” he says, and stares straight ahead at the houses across the street. 

Bev says, “Okay,” and doesn’t ask him again. Then she says, “You want another?”

Richie nods; takes it gratefully. 

Bev, thanks God, doesn’t bring up Eddie again. Instead, she sits quietly at his side, waiting for him to speak. Despite the feeling that his insides are being chewed up by worms with fangs, Richie is grateful for her presence. Something about her has always been so soothing; so reassuring, even when she’d acted out and fooled around just as much as he had. He thinks that if he liked women, he’d probably be in love with her. Then he thinks again, and realises he’s wrong. If he liked women - even if he exclusively liked women - he’d still want Eddie. 

He’ll always want Eddie, he realises.

He feels like he’s going to cry, or throw up again. 

Instead, he takes a long drag; beats the thoughts from his mind. 

“You heading back to Chicago, then?” he says to her. “Or you shacking up with Ben Handsome now?”

“Ha ha,” Bev says. “You’ve been waiting to make that joke since dinner on the first night, haven’t you?”

Richie says, “Maybe.”

Bev shakes her head, smiling. “Chicago,” she says. “I’m not going home, though. I have a friend from work who’s offered to put me up - help me with the divorce. My - he doesn’t know where she lives, so it’ll be okay.” She’s chewing a thumbnail absently, Richie notices. 

“Shit,” he says. “You think - would he really try something? I mean - if he knew where she lived?”

“Yeah,” Bev says, and it hurts his heart, how casually she says it. 

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” he asks. 

She glances at him, only half-smiling. “I’m sure. Honestly, Rich, it’s fine. Chicago’s a big city. Besides, I need to work. We’re not all super-rich super-famous comedians who can go gallivanting off at a moment’s notice.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not that rich. Or famous.” He’s not poor, either, not by a long shot, though he doesn’t tell her that. He wants to help - but he doesn’t want her to think he’s trying to coddle her, either. 

“I’m just teasing,” Bev says, stretching her legs out in front of her. 

“Yeah, but,” he shrugs, takes another drag. “If you get sick of Chicago, LA’s pretty fun. I have a spare room and I’m pretty handy with a pizza pocket.”

Bev laughs. 

“I’m serious!” he says, and he wishes she would take him up on his offer. It’s going to be hell to leave them all so soon after finding one another again. 

“I know, honey,” she says, nudging him with her elbow. “I know. And I am grateful. I just -” she pauses, gestures vaguely, scattering ash across the steps. “I need to get things tied up. I need to cut my ties. Then I can make a clean break.”

“Okay,” he says. “But, like, if you ever need anything - _anyone_ \- taking care of, maybe someone you were married to and who sounds like the total scum of the earth in my humble opinion, Hollywood is full of hitmen.”

Bev snorts.

“I mean it. Or I could kill him myself. I already killed one guy. Or, well, I thought I did.”

“I killed a clown from outer space!” Bev says, “I could kill a guy if I wanted to.”

Richie says, “That’s cute, Bevington. I killed a clown _and _our childhood bully.”

“Pretty badly if he came back to life a day later.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll stick with the hitman idea. Hey, did you know Frank Sinatra tried to take a hit out on Woody Allen?”

Bev laughs at him. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

“Right?”

Bev taps her toes together. “Anyway,” she says, “I have to go back to Chicago, there’re things I need to do there. Like not killing my ex, though if I change my mind, I promise you’ll be the first person I call.”

Richie pumps his fist. 

“Then, who knows.” She looks up at him. “Maybe I’ll come visit LA. They need fashion designers there too, right?”

“Sure do,” Richie says, crossing one leg over the other. “Well, not me, obviously, my sense of style is impeccable.”

“Jimmy Buffet wants what you have,” Bev says dryly, and Richie snorts, almost choking on his own smoke. 

“That’s a good one. Mind if I steal that? For my routine?”

“You finally gonna start writing your own jokes?” Bev says. “Or stealing them from your friends, I guess.”

Richie shrugs. He wants to; honestly, he likes writing jokes as much as he likes getting up on stage and running his mouth. Not that he’s enjoyed that part much lately. But with his own jokes…

“I used to write my own jokes,” he says. “How do you think I was discovered?”

Bev snorts. “Discovered,” she says. 

“Hell yeah,” Richie says. “Some Christopher Columbus shit. Some self-important white dudes stumbled across me doing my thing and doing it spectacularly _well_, I must say, decided they wanted a piece of me and reinvented me to resonate with the I-hate-my-wife folks.”

Bev says, “Richie, _you’re _white.”

Richie says, “How dare you. I come from a long line of proud lapsed Jews, thank you very much.”

Bev laughs. “Alright,” she says.

The door opens once more behind him, and when he twists round he feels like he’s been doused in cold water. 

“Morning, Eddie,” Bev says. “Did you sleep well?”

“Are you smoking?” Eddie says, as though they don’t both have cigarettes between their fingers. He’s got his suitcases with him, and his jacket, and he looks pale and upset.

Richie says, “Yeah.”

“It’ll kill you,” Eddie says, and his voice is weird; high and tremulous, and he’s standing as though he’s holding all the world’s tension in his own spine. Richie is reminded of a wind-up toy; he’d spent a lot of time during their childhoods winding Eddie up and watching him go, and it had always been funny, though it had irritated the crap out of everyone around them. But right now it’s not funny. Eddie isn’t mad and enthused and hyped up, egged-on by his partner in crime. He looks like a glass about to shatter, Richie thinks. 

“Whatever,” Richie says. 

Eddie says, “You know smokers are up to thirty times more likely to get lung cancer. Thirty! And it’s twice as likely you’ll have a heart attack.” He’s not looking at Bev. He’s looking at Richie. 

Richie’s throat is closing up again. He wonders if it’s the smoke. 

He says, “How the fuck do you just happen to remember these stupid figures?”

“It’s two numbers, Richie! It’s not exactly hard to remember!” His voice is becoming shrill. 

“Sorry, Eddie,” Bev says, perhaps sensing one of Eddie’s so-called asthma attacks approaching. “It’s a gross habit. I keep saying I’ll try and quit.” She stubs out her own cigarette. 

Eddie turns to look at her like he hadn’t previously noticed her sitting there, despite the fact that she’s literally right in front of him. “Oh,” he says. “That’s - that’s good, Bev.” He looks back at Richie.

Richie looks up at him. He doesn’t say anything. What can he say? Eddie’s made his mind up. He’s going back to New York. He has no right, he thinks, to feel as devastated as he does about it all. The clown is dead. Eddie is alive. 

That’s all he wants, he tells himself - for Eddie to be okay - for Eddie to be safe and happy - but he is greedy, and he also wants Eddie for himself, wants him, longs for him with all the weight of his pining childhood years behind him, wants him the way he’d had him the previous night, pliant and smiling beneath him, and the way he’d had him beneath Derry in Pennywise’s lair, frightened but brave and determined and loving, and the way he’d had him in the Jade of the Orient, quick and snappy and hot, and the way he’d had him all that time ago in Derry, his best friend, grinning and laughing, his first love, his _only _love…

And the thing is, Eddie is safe now, alive, and the scars are healing - the one on his face is almost totally gone - but he doesn't look happy. He’s staring at Richie, mouth tight, body tensed, as though trying to communicate with him psychically. But Richie doesn’t know what it is he is trying to say. 

And so he drops his gaze; stares down at his shoes.

He feels Bev’s eyes flicker between them. Don’t say anything, he thinks. Please Bev, don’t fucking say anything. 

“I have to leave,” Eddie says. “My flight is at one.”

Bev says, “It’s kind of early, Eddie. You have plenty of time. Why don’t we get the others; go have breakfast?”

“I need to beat the traffic. There might be - queues. Road closures.”

The roads in Derry are clear, and silent.

“Besides,” Eddie says, “you know how long it takes to check in...get through fucking security -”

He clearly doesn’t want to linger in Derry a moment longer. 

Richie feels sick. 

Bev says, “Well, you can’t go without saying goodbye to everyone. Wait - let me go grab Ben and Bill, and I can call Mike -”

Eddie says, “I’ll just stop by Mike’s on the way. I really need to go, Bev.”

Bev looks disappointed. The cigarette Richie is still holding finally gives up the ghost and crumbles between his fingertips. 

“Okay,” Bev says. “I’ll just - I’ll just get Ben and Bill, then.”

She leaves. 

Richie desperately wants to make Eddie stay; to beg and plead and cajole. But there’s no point. It won’t work. He’d heard Eddie on the phone; heard how small his voice had gotten. 

He remembers that, now, on the rare occasions he’d been allowed to witness Eddie interacting with his mother. He knows that voice. As frightened as Eddie had been down in the sewers, it was a different kind of fear that had kept him soft and compliant for his mother. 

Richie can’t imagine that; being afraid in your own home. His parents, though they had at times tired of his antics, and sometimes looked at him as though he was from a different species they couldn’t quite fathom, had never _scared _him. 

But he’d seen Eddie at home; seen him with his mother. 

They’d all been a little fearful of Mrs Kaspbrak, to be brutally honest, as much as Richie had joked about her. There had been times when she’d yelled at them - especially at Richie - when Eddie had come home late, or dirty, or had laughed or shouted too loudly, and the time he’d broken his arm after encountering the clown in the Well House, and that hadn’t been pleasant. But Richie remembers glimpsing moments when Eddie’s mother had spoken to him in a soft voice, a voice that was a little too sweet, had said things to him like they were questions - and Eddie had stiffened at his side, or widened his eyes, or his mouth had made that frightened tight little O shape. And he’d known something was not right - something beyond Mrs Kaspbrak being a bit nutty and overprotective.

He doesn’t think he’d ever said anything about it; not to his parents, or to the other Losers, and certainly not to Eddie. 

He kind of wishes he had, now. 

Because Eddie looks just the same as he did all those years ago, suddenly, sounded the same, back upstairs in the bathroom, and something’s not right, surely something’s not right...

But Richie doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a goddamn thing. It’s none of his business. It’s Eddie’s choice to get in that stupid rental car and drive to the fucking airport and get on that goddamn plane.

And Richie feels angry and upset and frightened all at once. 

He wishes he could say something to Eddie. Something to let him know that it’s all okay. He remembers telling Eddie how brave he was the other day, in the dark and the wet; how Eddie had looked at him after that. 

It all seems so far away, now. 

Eddie is still standing stiffly by the door.

Richie says, “Eds -”

But then the door opens and Bev reappears, followed by Ben and Bill, and before Richie can think of a way to finish his sentence, they’re hugging him, expressing their disappointment that he won’t stay for breakfast, telling him that Mike’s created a group chat so they can all talk to one another now, no matter where they are, and that they’ll arrange another meet-up in a few months, maybe at Christmas? Ben is happy to offer out his house, there’s plenty of space -

And Eddie hugs them goodbye; murmurs that it was good to see them.

Bev says, “Don’t be a stranger, honey.”

Richie feels like he is leaving his body. 

Eddie turns to him; hesitates. 

Richie seems him physically recoil. 

Eddie says, “Bye, Rich.”

Richie says, “See ya round, Kaspbrak,” with a lot more levity than he’s ever felt in his life. He slaps Eddie’s back, probably a little too hard. He can’t see anything. 

Eddie, close to his ear, says, “I’m sorry.”

And then Eddie Kaspbrak leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> myra is hard to write idk
> 
> richie's roach of the week shirt exists somewhere but i can't find the link to the picture now, soz. 
> 
> also i do not endorse richie calling the hospital where bowers lives the psycho unit richie is v rude.
> 
> oh and also its impossible to swallow your own tongue eddie is being eddie


	3. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oop this took...a long time. i can only apologise. here is a chapter in which not much happens. again i have been staring at this for hours and have no idea if it's any good.

Eddie regrets it the second the plane is in the air. 

He isn’t quite sure how he made it to the airport, or through check-in; he’d felt like he was underwater the entire time. But the moment the plane lifts off the runway, it’s like breaking through the surface. 

What is he doing, he asks himself. 

He picks up the safety information card from where it’s stowed in the back pocket of the seat in front of him in an attempt to distract himself; stares at the picture of the man adopting the brace position; the graphic of a woman helping a child with their oxygen mask. 

He doesn’t want to go back to New York - but in all honesty he doesn’t want to be in Derry, either. 

What would he have done, anyway, he asks himself, if he’d stayed?

Nevertheless, he thinks about it - it and It, Derry and the clown - and what they all went through the entire duration of his flight, and by the time the New York skyline begins to creep like inching fingers over the horizon, his knuckles are white against the armrests. 

He had hoped, guiltily, that Myra might not follow through with her promise to pick him up from the airport, but the first thing he sees when he comes out of baggage claim, his two overstuffed suitcases bumping painfully against his heels, is her white, worried face above the cord barriers, and it’s almost too much to bear, how disappointed the sight renders him. 

He knows it’s not right - has always known it’s not right, deep down, how he not only feels apathetic at best towards his spouse, but at times downright unsettled by her, fearful, as though there is anything to fear from anxious, insecure Myra, who grabs his face the instant he gets close enough, pushing his jaw sideways with one long, pink nail and cries, “What happened to your cheek?”

Eddie has always detested the idea that he might just be another one of those men who jokes about hating their wife; who perceives her as nothing but a “ball-and-chain,” who groans and shakes their head when a friend announces his engagement. He knows some of these men, works with them, and whenever they make these stupid, cruel jokes, he always wants to spin around on his chair and ask them, “Well, why did you marry her then?”

He never does, of course. 

Never does, because he isn’t sure how he’d answer the question himself. 

He’d known, in a fuzzy, academic sort of way when he’d met Myra, and then later, when he’d married her, that she reminded him of his mother. He’d never thought too deeply on this resemblance, because it made him feel a little queasy, but he knew it was there, and soon enough it was simply another part of the ill-fitting personhood he draped upon himself like an oversized suit. 

He’d married her because it was what his mother had wanted, and he’d gone into finance because it was what his mother had wanted, and he’d stayed in New York - where she had moved them to just before he’d turned sixteen to be closer to her sister - because it was what his mother had wanted, and after Sonia Kaspbrak had passed away, the smooth transition from doing things because they were what his mother wanted to doing things because they were what his wife wanted was as easy as pie. 

It’s always been simplest for Eddie to be told what to do, to follow directions, to meet expectations - it’s better than the alternative, anyhow - and he’d sort of assumed that was the way it had always been for him, and how it would always be, and that it was better to be mildly discomforted than scared. 

Only, it turns out, that was not how it had always been. It’s highly disconcerting to realise huge chunks of his life have been blotted out, and even more alarming that those chunks were when he’d been most himself; when he’d been happiest, when he’d been _brave - _and now he’s recovered those memories, he doesn’t think he can ever go back to how things were, not even one week ago. 

It feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

He’s able to recognise, now, with the blanks filled in, that this is how things have always felt, since leaving Derry as a teen - that vague sense of unease, of things not being quite right that he’d always put down to a ream of pre-existing medical conditions that, as it turned out, were not pre-existing at all, and had in fact never existed within his body, ever. Something deep in his subconscious, he realises, must have recognised this, and screamed and fought against it until his insides were a fluttering, frightened mess. 

It’s awakened something in him, something he’d never thought himself capable of, and it’s startling, the realisation, the knowledge that hits him like a freight train as they pull out onto Grand Central Parkway (Myra won’t let him drive - says he must be exhausted from his one hour forty-five minute flight) that he doesn’t want to go on like this.

What he wants, what he really wants, in his heart of hearts is to time-travel; to go back to his youth, back to that summer - relive it all and put his arms around his friends and stand up to his mother and kill It for good the first time around, and grow up and not move to New York but stay in touch with everybody, protect Stan and protect Bev, and maybe - maybe -

He can’t escape that Richie-shaped _maybe _that makes his insides flare hot_._

Somewhere to his right, somebody lays on their horn, and he flinches at the sudden, violent sound.

“I don’t know where you’re going, and I don’t know why,” Marie Fredriksson sings on the radio, and Eddie, settling slowly back into his seat, thinks, me either, Marie. 

Myra is saying, “can’t _believe _you just ran off without telling me where you were going, I was so scared, Eddie, what were you _thinking_, I could have come with you -”

The words don’t sound right in his ears. They sound like a made-up language. Eddie closes his eyes, focuses on the memories, the fresh, new ones blurring and intermingling with events that played out years ago…

Ben, proudly showing them the clubhouse for the very first time becomes Ben stood in the old sunken pit, ducking his head beneath the dusty beams, milky sunlight glinting off the grey streaks in his hair. Bill and his bike, alternately rusted and squeaking, new and gleaming, Bill both the tallest and shortest boy in the group - who would have thought? - Mike waving to them from the gate at the end of the track up to his grandfather’s farm, hello and goodbye, early morning and late evening, and Mike in the restaurant, Chinese then Italian, grinning that wide, delighted smile, reeling them all in with a tight hug. There’s Bev smoking on the porch of the Townhouse Inn, and Bev smoking on the rocks at the Barrens, legs stretched out, white knees pointed to the sky, her and Richie blowing curling grey plumes heavenwards...Richie, his sun-warmed pale skin pressed against Eddie’s own in the hammock; Richie, body warm and close, hovering above him in that hotel bed, holding Eddie like he’d never been held before, except when they were kids and Eddie had cried to him secretly about his mother, boiling over with shame and embarrassment, but Richie had just laid an awkward teenage hand on his back and let him wail it out - and when he’d been dying down in the sewers, unable to see much of anything, or hear much of anything, or feel much of anything, his senses giving up the ghost, except for that hot pressure of Richie’s hand against his stomach wound...

The thing is, though, he can’t go back, no matter how much he dwells upon it; soaks in it, the wonderful and terrible memories he’s now recovered. 

He has to move forward. He can’t change what happened, but, he thinks, stomach swooping at the realisation, he can change what he does now. 

He imagines himself a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now, looking back at this moment. What does he want to remember, he asks himself. 

Myra’s voice rises in pitch and urgency - he recognises this, faintly - but it means nothing to him. She sounds as though she’s speaking through thick cotton, or from behind a solid wall. 

He remembers the leper’s voice - _what are you looking for, Eddie? - _like wet gravel in his ears. 

_I don’t know_, he’d thought at the time. _I don’t know._ That _I don’t know _had stretched on and on, through his teenage years and into adulthood. He’d become a receptacle for the whims and wants of those around him; a soft, thin wire, bending to their will easily and without resistance. _I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. _He hadn’t known a goddamn thing. 

He knows now - he thinks he does. He thinks about his life, and it’s like seeing things in sharp technicolour after years of staring numbly at staticky black and white. His very existence has been set aflame before his eyes.

His stomach is up in his throat. 

“Eddie,” Myra says from the driver’s seat, “have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

Eddie turns his head slowly to look at her. She is hard to see beneath the incoming dusk. She looks like a whole different person to the one he left just a few days before. He thinks that if somebody were to tell him the real Myra had been spirited away and replaced by an actor, he might just believe them. And then he thinks that if they told him that his wife has always been an actor, and that none of his life since leaving Derry the first time has been real, he’d believe that too. 

She is frowning, her eyes flicking from the slow traffic in front of them to Eddie, a million miles away, drowning in fear and memories and wonder across the central console. The whole interior of the car is washed yellow in the watery afternoon light.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, automatically. 

For a moment he thinks she might get angry. Her eyes narrow. He stiffens, out of pure habit. Then Myra says, “You don’t seem well to me, Eddie. Are you feeling alright?”

He doesn’t know.

He feels queasy from the silent internal decision he’s made; or perhaps that’s due to his skipping a dose or two of Valium. Come to think of it, he isn’t sure when he took his last pill. He’d taken them with him to Derry, of course, but the days and nights had bled together, and he’d ended up somewhat preoccupied by the murderous clown, in the end. 

He doesn’t say anything to his wife. 

There’s nothing he can say. 

“Listen to your heart,” implores the radio, “Before you tell him goodbye.”

Eddie aches. 

And they drive on, slowly, into the falling night.

*

Eddie takes his Valium, and he goes back to work. 

He can’t not, as Myra had pointed out to him when he was still in Derry, over the phone. 

He goes back to work and sits down at his desk and turns his computer on, and stares at his inbox, at all the emails he hasn’t read, and he suddenly thinks that he can’t remember how to do his job anymore. The whole thing feels miserably anti-climactic. 

He stares around the office; at the drooping plants, at the dirty coffee mugs, the dog-eared pads of paper, the tangled wires. His own headset is tied in at least three different knots. Eddie sighs, and reaches to unravel it. He knows how it feels. 

It is hard to reconcile his existence in this bleak, sterile office with the labyrinthine sewers beneath Derry; even harder to reconcile his own self, stiff-backed in his swivelling chair and sensible suit, with the person he used to inhabit - the boy who’d kicked a child-eating clown in the face, who’d once stood up to his lying mother, who’d laughed and screeched with his friends, tanned and happy beneath the high summer sun; but also with the man who had headed back to the town he’d forgotten, consumed by fear but resolute, the man who’d been stabbed protecting his friend, who’d ended the clown - for good, this time - who’d fought and beaten death itself, who’d dragged himself out of the dirty hole in which he’d bled out, who’d refused to give up, with - this. Himself. Him, staring blindly into the H Drive, he who had gone limp and still and pliant the moment his wife had told him to come home, who was _afraid _of her, though he had no reason to be, surely; who had run from the one person who’d ever said that they loved him with any real conviction or honesty, from the best night he’d had in a long, long time, from gentle caresses and whispered affirmations, from the way his heart had swelled and begun to beat once again in a way it hadn’t done in over twenty years…

Eddie sighs, covering his face with his hands. 

It is hard to harmonise all these disparate chunks of his life and his self, scattered as they are, great gaping holes of missing time pushing them apart - but they are still him, even if he cannot understand it. 

He thinks that the Eddie who screamed at and drop-kicked an ancient shapeshifting evil would not have turned his back on Richie - run home to the wife who feels like a stranger like a kicked dog with its tail between its legs. But he had. 

And he thinks that the Eddie who had dutifully kissed Myra’s cheek earlier that morning when she’d cleared her throat and pointed at it as he'd headed for the door would not have dropped everything to charge headfirst into certain death in a sewer, or tugged a blade from his own face and stabbed a murderous middle-school bully with it, or launched a rusted iron spike into the mouth of a killer clown to save his friend’s life. But he _had_. 

He feels shattered in a way he’s never felt before. For so long, he’s been trying desperately to hold himself together; to force each moving part to rotate, to glide, to screw into place, secretly terrified that one unexpected gust of wind could splinter him, blow his very existence to smithereens... 

And then it did. 

Derry had decimated him.

He sighs again, loudly. 

“Are you alright?” his co-worker asks him. 

Eddie blinks, looks up. 

Andy has worked for the same company as Eddie for fifteen years. He hates it, apparently - he tells Eddie this nearly every day - but he seemingly has no intention of leaving. 

“I said, are you alright?” Andy says. 

Eddie opens his mouth, starts to say “Yes, thank you, are you?” because that is what you say when your colleague asks this question. And then he thinks again, and wants to say, “I don’t know,” because that would be a true Eddie Kaspbrak answer - he doesn’t know, doesn’t know how he feels, just that he is so confused and torn and afraid and he doesn’t know what to do next, but he has to do _something, something, _only all the somethings he can think of are so big and frightening...and then he thinks about it a third time, and he realises that actually - no. No, he’s not alright. Not really. How can he be? How can he be, after everything?

Andy is frowning at him across their desks, face partially obscured by his monitor.

“No,” Eddie says, “no, actually, I’m not.”

Then he opens his first email and begins to read. 

Andy doesn’t say anything further to him, but Eddie finds their brief exchange strangely freeing, regardless. 

*

As promised, Mike had created a group chat for them all on their last day in Derry, unimaginatively named _The Losers’ Club_. It’s comforting, having his friends there, their conversations and snippets of their lives visible for him to see whenever he wants, though he doesn’t use it as much as he’d like to. Eddie isn’t much of a texter - never has been - and though he misses the others keenly, feels their absence like a lost limb, that void of over twenty years looms and threatens to swallow him whole whenever his thumb hovers over the send button. As intense and close as their friendship was, back in the late eighties and early nineties, many years have nevertheless elapsed since. They’ve been through some shit together, true, but in many ways time has rendered them strangers once more. 

Still, whenever a message from one of the group pops up, his heart feels a little lighter; the world a little less hideously vast. 

Ben shares pictures of his dog, a big German Shepherd called Petra who, he says, is very excited to meet them all. Bev tells them about her job, sends pictures of designs she’s working on (Ben always responds “Amazing!” which they all rib him for privately), and updates on her divorce. Her husband is not making things easy for her apparently, although, much to everybody’s relief, he hasn’t managed to contact her yet, other than through their respective attorneys. 

Bill and Mike seem to use the group chat most frequently, often ending up in conversations with one another which leave Eddie with twenty, thirty, forty notifications, until Richie points out that they are perfectly capable of texting one another privately. Eddie doesn't mind, though - not really. He's happy for Bill; happy for Mike; thrilled to see his friends' good moods, feels warmed by their peripheral interactions, reassured by their virtual presence.

Like him, Richie doesn’t use the group much, except to send the emoji with hearts for eyes in response to photographs of Petra, or to make jokes at somebody else’s expense, and once to ask which celebrity he should start “Twitter beef” with. (Ben, Bill, and Bev had ignored him. Mike had suggested Donald Trump. Eddie had said Bill Denbrough. Richie had replied with three thumbs up.) 

Richie also messages him privately, on occasion. Mostly his texts consist of things he thinks Eddie will find funny, which in truth, he usually does. As much as he hates to admit it, he and Richie have very similar senses of humour. Richie sends him a picture of a white mug he finds in a store with a black handle, the letters U N T printed on the side. He sends him a photo of an elderly lady pushing a fluffy brown dog in a pram beneath the bright Los Angeles sun. He sends him a video of a cockatoo dancing to a Whitney Houston song. He never mentions what happened between them, that last night in Derry. Eddie almost wishes he would. 

Eddie doesn’t have any form of social media, other than an old Facebook account Myra had wheedled him into setting up, although he hasn’t updated it in years - it’s never really interested him, and besides, there’s never been anyone he wants to keep up with - but he still gets into the habit of checking Bill and Richie’s official Twitter accounts.

The others all have Facebook, apparently - Ben tells them all to add him, one evening - but Eddie decides, without saying anything to Ben about it, that he doesn’t want to, knowing that Myra will want to know why he’s suddenly active on there again, and will be able to see his interactions with his friends, which doesn’t seem right. The idea of his life in New York and his life with the Losers coming in the kind of close proximity afforded by the internet sets his nerves jangling. Besides, even if he blocks her, she’ll find out, and anyhow she knows his passwords, and the truth is he wants to have this, these friendships, keep them for himself and himself alone; at least, just for now. 

Bill doesn’t tweet all that often, but Eddie knows he’s on set at the moment, apparently working on last-minute script tweaks, and in the plotting stages of his new novel. Occasionally he will retweet something political, reply scathingly to some hate-filled right-wing commentator, and it always makes Eddie smile, remembering Bill’s childish, bull-headed bravery, the way he’d stood up to Bowers, the way he’d led them all so fearlessly and how they’d followed, emboldened by his courage. 

Richie posts stuff too, although sporadically, sometimes firing off five tweets in a row when it’s 3am in Los Angeles. One night, when he can’t sleep, Eddie finds himself scrolling back through all of Richie’s posts. He also seems to spend a lot of time arguing with Trump supporters, though unlike Bill, who combats lies and propaganda with rationality and facts, Richie generally seems to prefer telling people that he’s fucked their mother, or that they should look into purchasing penis enlargement pills to deal with all the pent-up rage they’re experiencing. There’s also a lot of typical Richie Tozier-brand nonsense on there; one tweet says: “House arrest sounds amazing @lapdVanNuysDiv hit me up,” whilst the one immediately preceding it reads: “Whoever told TMZ that I was visiting cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills this morning because I am planning a hair transplant is SICK and WRONG. I am getting forehead augmentation surgery.”

Over the past few days, however, Richie has been oddly quiet on Twitter. Eddie worries, but he can’t ask him if he’s okay without revealing he’s been looking him up online; and besides, he’s acting fairly normally in their group chat. Or at least, as normal as Richie is capable of being. 

Still, he frets about the change in Richie’s online activity for a couple of days, until finally he cannot stand it anymore, and finds himself Googling his friend’s name. 

It turns out Richie has cancelled a number of upcoming shows, his publicist citing “personal reasons” for the decision. Fans are apparently unhappy, though Richie has not yet addressed the situation himself. He hasn’t mentioned anything about it to Eddie, or, to Eddie’s knowledge, any of their other friends either.

Eddie reads through a couple of the articles, pausing momentarily on the pictures. Most of them are of Richie at various red carpet events, wearing a wide range of ugly shirts and squinting at the camera. Eddie grins, and rolls his eyes. From there, he finds himself looking at other photos, ones of Richie onstage, paparazzi shots of him getting coffee, talking animatedly into his phone, frowning towards the photographer from behind large, dark sunglasses. There’s also shots of him when he was a little younger, spilling out of clubs and bars, surrounded by other people whose faces Eddie vaguely recognises from the television and magazine covers, laughing, mouth open, looking totally out of it. He reads Richie’s Wikipedia page too, finds out about the cocaine, his stint in rehab, and it makes something hurt deep inside him. He’s about halfway through the Filmography section when Myra appears behind him, clearing her throat. 

Eddie fumbles to put away his phone before she can see what he was looking at - although, he reassures himself, it’s not a crime to read Wikipedia. 

“What are you doing?” Myra asks. 

“Nothing,” Eddie says. He feels cornered, like he’s done something wrong. He feels that way a lot of the time with Myra - like he’s hurt her, or has made a stupid mistake, and she’s caught him right in the middle of it.

Myra says, “Hmm,” and Eddie thinks, she doesn’t believe me. He says nothing else though, just keeps gripping his phone tightly, not wanting to look. 

She waits a moment - he feels her presence behind him, knows her eyes are on the back of his head though he does not turn to meet her gaze - then she says, “I’m going to make dinner. How about chicken?”

Eddie says, “I’m not really hungry, actually.”

“You’re not hungry?” Myra sounds worried. “Why? Are you feeling alright?” She’s there suddenly at the side of him, reaching out a hand towards his forehead. 

He ducks away, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m fine, Myra,” he says. 

She’s looking at him, eyes wide and focused like she thinks if she stares hard enough she’ll be able to peer into his soul. The thought of that fills him with dread, as icy as the wind that rattles between the buildings of New York in the midst of winter. He’s always hated the weather here. “You don’t seem fine to me. You’ve been acting very strange lately, Eddie. Have you been taking your medication?”

“Yes.” He has, and he hates it. He wonders, for the first time in a while, which of his pills he actually needs. It’s terrifying to think that he might be taking stuff that is totally unnecessary, and may in fact be doing his body more harm than good, but giving it up is somehow even more frightening. He feels terribly trapped. 

Myra is saying, “Perhaps I should make you an appointment with Dr. Ramani. We could go tomorrow; I could come with you.”

Eddie tries to edge around her, out into the hallway. “It’s okay, honey. It’s fine. Thank you, though.”

She keeps staring at him, moving her body slightly so he cannot squeeze past her. He doesn’t think it’s on purpose, the way she sometimes crowds him, presses a little too close, blocks off potential escape routes - not that he wants or needs to _escape _anything - but it’s still oddly unnerving. The discomfort is growing. He’s felt it for a long, long time - he can’t really remember a moment in his whole life when he hasn’t felt what he is now able to identify as constant, low-level panic.

The idea that he’s afraid of his wife is sickening. There’s no reason for him to be, none whatsoever. 

Myra says, “Well then, maybe a health retreat. How about that one we went to upstate last year? I really think it would do you good, Eddie. You look awful; you’re so pale, like you could collapse at any moment. I wonder if you might be Anaemic?”

Eddie feels dizzy. He doesn’t think Anaemia is something his mother ever convinced him was an ailment of his, but there were so many things she insisted were wrong with him he’s honestly lost count. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t know which pill does what and when and why he started taking them. Maybe he _is _Anaemic? His head is spinning. 

“I’m,” he says, but Myra interrupts. 

“I really think you ought to get tested. And we should book that time away. Can you call in sick to work tomorrow?”

Eddie is pretty sure he’s used up all of his paid sick days for the year. He does take a lot of time off work unwell - his manager has pulled him up for it on several occasions. 

“I’m fine,” he insists, but he _does _feel a little ill. “I don’t - I don’t want to go to the doctor. Or that - that health retreat.” 

“Eddie,” Myra says, “I’m just trying to help you.”

Eddie says, more firmly this time, the words tripping over one another off his tongue, like he’s a kid again, and has jammed too many skittles into his mouth, “Myra, I really don’t want to.”

Myra freezes, staring at him - then she says, “What has gotten _into _you, Eddie, why are you being so _horrible_ to me?”

“I’m not -”

“You’ve been so _sharp _with me lately, and if you’re not _shouting _at me, you’re ignoring me, acting so distant, and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it!”

“I,” Eddie says again, but he doesn’t know what to tell her, not now she’s crying, fat tears coursing their way down her blushed and powdered cheeks. She’s still blocking the doorway to the hall, stood solid and firm, fists clenched, though her shoulders are trembling and her face is screwed up in anguish. Suddenly, painfully, Eddie thinks of his mother. 

“You need to take a good, long look at yourself, Eddie,” Myra says, breath hitching, eyes fixed upon his face like there’s a target squarely placed between his eyebrows. “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells with you at the moment. I’ve only ever wanted to help you, and you’re throwing that all back in my face.” She glares at him, eyes rimmed red, then turns and stalks out of the living room. 

Eddie collapses back onto the sofa, his insides feeling as sore and bruised as they did back in the sewers beneath his hometown. 

*

He decides to call Bev one night, whilst Myra is watching television. He doesn’t know what it is that she’s so engrossed in, and he doesn’t care. Allowing himself to recognise that, to experience that little bit of spite feels good, somehow, though it doesn’t stop the swift sweep of guilt that washes over him shortly afterwards. Still, he thinks. Baby steps.

He calls her from his bedroom, the door almost fully closed, so Myra will struggle to overhear him. It’s the first time he’s talked to one of them since leaving Derry - properly talked, not including their text messages - and it feels as though by doing so he’s attempting to fix the gaps that began as tiny fissures and are now gaping chasms between his childhood and his life now. It feels like the beginning of something; a wound scarring, skin being stitched shut. It’s also weirdly thrilling; for one mad moment, Eddie feels like he’s having an affair. 

He tries not to think too hard about why he chose to call Bev, rather than Richie or Bill or Mike or Ben.

Bev picks up after just a couple of rings. 

“Eddie!” she says, and she sounds genuinely delighted to be speaking to him, “Oh my God! How are you?”

They shoot the shit for a while - Eddie complains about his job, Bev tells him about how everyone at work has been asking how her trip home was, which they both find hysterical for some reason. They talk about the others - about how Mike had sent a message to the group chat the other day confessing that he didn’t have a passport and questioning how he ought to go about applying for one, and how Richie had responded by asking him if he’d ever heard of this cool website called Google, then been instantly told to shut up by Bill - about Petra, who Bev has apparently Facetimed, which is kind of sweet, Eddie has to admit - and then they talk about the weather in their respective cities, the news, freshly recovered memories of their childhoods together. 

They do not talk about spouses, or Stan, or the terrible things that happened to them less than a month before in Derry. 

“It’s so good to talk to you,” Bev says, a little while later. “I know we said that we wouldn’t forget this time, and that we’d stay in touch, but...I don’t know. I was worried, I guess. Worried that, you know. Adult shit - our new lives - all that crap would get in the way.”

Eddie had thought the same thing, privately, anxiously, but he finds himself telling her that it won’t, and he’s surprised by the conviction in his own voice. “We won’t let it,” he says, thinking back to how Richie had said the same thing at dinner that final night. “It’s...this is too important.”

Bev grins down the phone, and he can _hear _it - that’s how big she’s smiling. He can picture it too; her white teeth peeking over her lower lip, the way her cheeks will be raising and crinkling, how her eyes are probably folding down at the outer corners. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you’re right. We won’t.”

There’s a brief pause, in which Eddie’s fingers tighten their grip on his phone; in which he strains to hear Myra down the hallway, trying to ascertain if she’s still focused on her show. 

He breathes in, slowly. “Bev,” he says, “can I tell you something?”

Bev makes a quiet, inquisitive noise. 

He hesitates a moment. His stomach is tying itself in knots, and he feels hot and cold with shame. He hopes, more fervently than before, that Myra can’t hear him. 

“I think,” he says, hesitantly, wondering if he is in fact making a huge mistake by voicing these thoughts out loud, “I think I’m a bad husband.”

Bev doesn’t say anything. 

He says, “Do you - do you think -”

“Eddie,” Bev says, gently. “Why do you think that?”

Eddie thinks, because Myra tells me I am. Or - she doesn’t _tell _him; not in so many words. It’s in her actions; in the way she looks at him, somewhat pitying and disappointed, and the way she says she feels like he doesn’t care, that she has to tiptoe around him, that he doesn’t listen. 

He says, “Myra says I’ve been horrible to her lately.”

“Oh,” Bev says. “Why does she say that?”

Eddie isn’t really sure, to be perfectly honest. “Because...because she’s been trying to help me. She doesn’t think I’m very well at the moment - she wants me to go to this health spa, retreat thing, and I said I didn’t want to.”

Bev says, “She said you were horrible because you don’t want to go to a health retreat?”

“No, that’s not -” Eddie struggles to explain. “She keeps trying to help me, and I just keep brushing her off. Pushing her away.”

Bev is silent for a long moment, and Eddie begins to wonder, suddenly, if he’s said too much; if Bev is beginning to realise what an unpleasant, cruel person he is and is now deciding she wants nothing more to do with him. He would understand, God, he’d totally understand, after everything she’s been through - then, slowly, carefully, Bev says, “Help you with what?”

Eddie blinks. “Huh?”

“You said she’s trying to help you. What is it she’s trying to help you with?”

“Oh,” Eddie pauses. “You know....I’m not - she thinks I’m sick. I might be. I don’t know.”

Bev says, “Do you feel sick?”

“I - I don’t know. Not really.” The truth is, it’s always been tricky for Eddie to identify when he’s unwell. When he was younger, he’d feel fine until his mom started peering and frowning, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead, making him open his mouth and let her stare into the darkness of his throat, and then, when she’d anxiously told him that she really didn’t like the look of his tonsils, he’d started to feel shivery and sweaty, and the back of his mouth had begun to itch. 

Now, he relies on Myra to monitor his health. He overworks himself - he knows he does, because sometimes he stays in the office way past five thirty, preferring the peace of the place when everybody’s gone and the cocoon of night outside to his own home, where his wife fusses and worries, even though it makes him feel guilty. Myra has to tell him to stop, sometimes, to rest; has to let him know when he’s starting to look peaky, when the circles beneath his eyes are a little too dark. On the rare occasions he is able to recognise that he feels unwell, too, he’ll mention it, and she’ll coo and tell him it’s alright, she’ll take care of him, and it almost feels like love, like affection, the way she steers him back to bed, touches his head, brings him tea. 

Interrupting his thoughts, Bev asks, “Have you told her that? That you feel fine?”

“Yeah.” Edde shifts, nervously. “But she said I was being horrible to her.”

Bev breathes out, slowly, miles and miles away in Chicago. “Oh, honey,” she says. 

Eddie doesn’t know what that means. He says, “What?”

“At the risk of sounding like Richie,” Bev says, slowly, carefully, “your wife sounds - well, she kind of sounds like your mother, if I’m being honest.”

Eddie swallows. The taste of his own throat is bitter. He doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry,” Bev says. “It’s not my place to say. I guess I’m kind of just - jumping the gun a little.” She hesitates. “You know, with what happened to me. I wound up marrying my dad.” She laughs, humourlessly.

Eddie breathes in sharply. 

“Sorry. Like I said, it’s not up to me to say anything about your marriage. It’s none of my business.”

Down the hallway, the television continues to blare. The doorway to his bedroom is still almost completely closed. Myra remains, to Eddie’s knowledge, on the sofa in the sitting room. Eddie closes his eyes, and says, quietly, “How did we do it, Bev?”

“Hmm?”

“End up marrying our parents.” His hands feel hot and damp.

Bev exhales, slowly, shakily, and Eddie is overwhelmed with a sudden rush of love for her. “Oh, Eddie,” she says, softly. “I wish I knew.”

Eddie tips his head back against the wall; bites his lip. He says, nervously, “Can I - can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Always, honey.”

Eddie takes a deep breath. 

“When you - when we were leaving dinner, that last night, and you started talking about divorce, were you - were you talking about me? A little bit? I mean, I know you were talking about _yours_, but when you came up to me and you said that divorce isn’t always a bad thing, was that - were you -” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

On the other end of the line, Bev breathes in slowly. Then she says, “A little bit, yes.”

Eddie exhales, hard. 

Bev says, “I mean, myself too. I have to - sometimes I have to remind myself I’m doing the right thing, leaving him. Sometimes I get so scared I want to go back, even though I know I shouldn’t.” A pause, and then, cautiously, she says, “Do you know what I mean?”

Eddie hesitates. They’re both being so careful, talking round the issue, leaving it unnamed. They can’t keep doing that, though, he thinks - the longer they let it slip, keep the language sanitary and polite, the more powerful it gets, the harder it is to overcome. It’s like Pennywise, he supposes, in a weird sort of way - strong and consuming when It was an eater of worlds, an Eldrichian nightmare from a place they had been unable to comprehend, but defeatable when It was a clown - when It was just a clown, and they had named It as such. 

Eddie summons all his bravery from beneath the house on Neibolt Street, from some dark recess deep inside him only lit by the company of his friends, and says, “I - I think I do. Maybe.”

Down the phone, Bev sighs, and it sounds like relief.

Eddie realises he is shaking, just a little. 

Bev says, “I always thought - when we were kids - you were the only one who kind of - _got _\- what was going on. At home, that is. I mean, the others knew, but like...you got it. You understood.”

Eddie swallows. He remembers occasions when they’d seen a bruise on her wrist, or she’d made some reference to her father that was tinged with fear and they’d all glanced at one another, knowing, somehow, but not daring to breathe it into being. One day, he remembers, suddenly, he and Richie and Bev and Ben had been hanging out in the Clubhouse, throwing marbles, and Bev had burst into tears. Nobody had asked why; there was no need. They’d all known. After she’d left, Ben had said something, furiously, about going to the police. Richie had agreed, but pointed out that it would have to be Bev who did it, because they had no evidence. 

Eddie hadn’t said anything, though. He’d known Bev wouldn’t go to the police, or to a teacher, or to one of their parents, or anyone else, wouldn’t put into words whatever was happening to her at home that made her cut her hair and freak out when someone called her Bevvie and panic about being seen with a group of boys and get called a slut at school - just knew. And he didn’t blame her - not for one second. He knew how it was - that fear that your parent was secretly a god - that conviction that they could do whatever they wanted with you until you turned 18, no matter if it frightened or hurt you - they were doing it because it was what they felt was best. And you had to respect that. 

“Not - not really,” he says, and Bev doesn’t say anything. She stays quiet; lets him talk. “I mean - kind of. I don’t know. What happened with your dad was - was way, way worse than anything my mom ever did, and - I mean, I know sometimes I was a little afraid of her, but it was never - nothing like what you…” he trails off.

Bev says, “Come on, Eddie. We all saw your mom. We knew what she was doing.”

Eddie grips the phone more tightly. _What_, he thinks, _what was she doing? _He doesn’t say this, though. Instead, he says, “But what you - what happened to you - that was _abuse._”

The word is harsh - it cuts from his lips, sizzles through the ether between them. Eddie isn’t sure he’s ever said it before. He feels a little ill.

Bev says, gently, “My therapist says all her clients say that.”

“Say what?”

“That what they went through wasn’t that bad - that it wasn’t _real _abuse. That there are people who went through stuff ten times worse than they did. And I used to say that too, all the time. But you know what? There _are _people who’ve had it worse. There’ll always be people who’ve had it worse, or will have it worse. Somewhere out there there’s a girl who was kept in a basement by some perverted old maniac from when she was little and had a bunch of kids by him and finally got out and was rescued and you know what? She’ll be telling her therapist the same shit, Eddie. But the thing inside her head making her say that - it’s not real. It’s like - it’s like a worm in her brain that’s gotten used to things being dark and cold and horrible, that’s more comfortable being in that pervert’s basement than it is being out in the real world and being in therapy and putting in the hard work to rewire things and relearn them and find some...some fucking self-worth. And it’s okay, it’s okay to be scared, but it’s _not _okay to do yourself a disservice and act like what happened to you was okay or _not that bad, _or you deserved it, because you didn’t.” She stops, and she sounds out of breath, and all of a sudden, Eddie realises she’s crying. 

“Bev,” he says.

“Neither of us did,” she says, softly, and sniffs, and more than anything, Eddie wants to be there in Chicago with her, to put his arms around her, even though usually he hates being touched, being held against someone. “We were _children_.”

There’s a lump in Eddie’s throat, and he’s still shaking, he realises, and it’s so, so hard not to cry as he says, “It’s still not the same, though. What happened to you. I -”

“It’s not the same,” Bev agrees, and her voice is firm once again. “But that doesn’t mean one of us had it worse.”

Eddie closes his eyes. 

“And it may not be the same now,” Bev says, softly, “and I hope it isn’t, Eddie, I hope I’m wrong. But you knew what I meant. When I told you divorce isn’t always a bad thing, I was talking about you as much as I was talking about me.”

He swallows. “How - how did you know?” he says. He feels weak, and weirdly shaky. 

Bev says, not unkindly, “The same way we knew as children, I think. You remember when we all met, and things just felt...right? Like - we all knew we’d be important to each other? We all recognised that we were different, and we needed one another? And I -” Here, she struggles, breathes in, slowly and deeply, like she’s composing herself. “Do you remember when you knew - when you realised what was going on with - with me. My dad. Do you remember?”

“I just had a feeling,” Eddie says, quietly. But it was more than that. They were kindred spirits, all of them, all the Losers, but with Bev there had been something different. When the others had gotten angry on her behalf, he’d gotten scared _with _her. That was the difference. _It was different to what happened to you, _the voice in his brain supplies unhelpfully, yet again, and he _knows _that, but there was still something horribly recognisable there. Something that had made them both fear going home in a way that had nothing to do with emptiness and distant parents after the loss of a sibling, with loneliness, with self-doubt and confusion. 

Bev says, “Then I guess I had a feeling as well, Eddie. I looked at you and I thought, not you too.” She pauses. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Eddie says, voice husky, “I’m sorry too, Bev. I’m sorry for both of us.” It’s not confirming anything, he thinks to himself, but it’s not denying it either. It feels like a gargantuan step. 

They don’t say anything for a long moment. Bev is quiet, lets Eddie breathe deeply into the phone. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, at last. 

“And I can’t tell you,” Bev says, gently. “I think you’ve had enough of being told what to do and what not to do and what to think, deep down. God knows I have. But I can tell you what I told you back in Derry. Divorce isn’t always a bad thing.”

Eddie says, “I thought you were gonna say, I can kill monsters if I believe I can.”

Bev laughs, and the sound of it loosens the band that’s been constricting around Eddie’s lungs since he woke up and spoke to Myra that last morning in the Townhouse Inn.

“That too,” Bev says. “Whatever you choose to do, Eddie, I know you’ll kill it. And I don’t think you called me to ask me what I think you should do - not really. I think you were hoping I’d tell you - make it easier. But I also think you were hoping I’d tell you to do one thing in particular. And I think the outcome you were hoping for - the fact that you were hoping for it at all, I think that’s what you should do. And I think you know that.”

“You’re so wise, Bev. You’re like - talking to you is like talking to Gandalf.”

She laughs, long and loud and delighted, and Eddie loves her, he really does. 

“Wish I could apply some of that wisdom to my own life,” she says, and Eddie hums down the phone.

“Are you okay?” he asks her, “really?”

A moment. She’s thinking. Eddie relaxes into the quiet; draws his feet up the mattress towards himself. 

“Sometimes,” Bev says. “I have more good days than bad, now. And I have you guys back.”

“Tell me,” he says, “tell me what you’ve been doing. Tell me about what you do on the good days.”

He can hear the smile in her voice when she answers, as she tells him about her job, how it’s an escape from all the meetings with her lawyer and her therapist; how she lives with her friend now, what the apartment is like, how they get takeout in the evenings, or take it in turns to cook, about her friend’s fat, spoilt cat; what she does on the weekend to relax; her plans for the future. 

And Eddie smiles, and closes his eyes, and imagines. 

*

The scar on his cheek is almost completely gone. He tells Myra that he cut himself shaving, and she fusses, and makes him throw away all his old razors and buy new ones that she believes are less likely to cause damage, and he does it, just for a peaceful life. 

Now that he thinks about it, an awful lot of the things he does are done for the sake of a peaceful life. 

Myra isn’t _cruel _to him - has never hit him, pushed him, used physical force against him - and she doesn’t say nasty things to him, not in the way he imagines Bev’s husband might have spoken to her. Myra has never once told him he’s stupid, or weak; not really. 

Nonetheless, the fact remains that Eddie is discomfited by her presence. 

It’s worse when she’s _not _there, admittedly; on past occasions when she’d spent the night away from him with her sister, or with friends - once, she had spent nearly a week away on a friend’s bachelorette getaway at a resort in Mexico - he’d rattled around the apartment alone, feeling jumpy and on-edge, convinced he was about to have a heart attack and die isolated in his bedroom with nobody to call an ambulance, or that some mad axeman was going to break in and kill him; fearful that he might slip getting out of the shower, bang his head on the sink and start bleeding out on the tiled floor (Myra had warned him about that before; fretted that without her there to keep an eye on him something terrible might happen, and he hated to be on his own anyway, so the fear only intensified.)

Still, whenever she returned, he’d almost longed for the quiet solitude of being alone again; of being able to watch what he wanted to on television, with the volume turned to the level _he _prefered, choosing his own food, managing his own medications (when she was away, he still took them on the same schedule, diligently, but there was something nice about not having another person in your ear, constantly checking if you’d taken this drug, that vitamin, as though he hadn’t been taking them at the same time every day since he was a small boy. It was both empowering, and strangely relaxing.)

But since returning from Derry, he hasn’t had a moment to himself, not really, save for when he's driving to work, and the thirty or so minutes he’d spent on the phone to Bev - but even then he’d had one ear cocked towards the door, listening out for his wife shifting in her seat in the sitting room, anticipating her standing up, stalking down the hallway, opening the door and - and - 

And what, he asks himself? What is he so frightened of? What is he worried she’ll do?

They’re still sleeping in separate bedrooms at night, which is a relief, and makes it much easier to hide the huge scars on his stomach and back from her. He still worries about her somehow catching a glimpse of them, though - when does he not worry? - although, like the cut on his face and the old mark on his left palm, the wounds seem to be healing at a much faster rate than expected. 

Derry magic, he thinks to himself, and tries not to focus on the fact that if they had been healing at the expected rate that would mean there was no Derry magic at all, and if there was no Derry magic, _that _would mean he’d still be buried beneath Neibolt Street, guts hanging out - 

It sometimes hits him like this, the fact that he should be dead, that perhaps he _was _dead, briefly, that maybe his heart had stopped back then, for a few minutes or a few hours, that his spinal cord might have been severed and his intestines and kidneys and bowels may have been punctured - and this train of thought always renders him breathless, light-headed and dizzy. 

He imagines his body reforming down there in the dark, knitting itself back together, sinew binding, bones clicking into place, nerves and tendons and veins slithering across the dank floor of the cavern like tiny wet, red snakes, licking and coiling around one another, spurting electrical messages and blood back and forth until the gaps were filled with new, fat flesh, his spinal discs crunching and muscles groaning as everything was forced back into alignment. 

He even dreams about it at night - his body being cracked open then remade - once or twice, and wakes up in a cold sweat, skin prickling, as though the mending process is still taking place, as though some invisible thread is stitching him back together.

He imagines his body being reassembled, effortlessly, by something way beyond his comprehension, as easily as if he were a child’s toy, a piece of Lego, and then he imagines how quickly he could be torn apart once again.

Several times, he finds himself trembling and sweaty, arms wrapped around his own waist, forehead resting on the edge of the toilet seat like he’s just vomited his own stomach lining up, or sat on the floor of the shower, shaking beneath the onslaught of water spray as his vision dips in and out, desperately trying to force himself to focus on a particular droplet coursing its way down the frosted glass door. 

It is, by far, the worst part of being resurrected, or surviving impalement, or whatever the fuck it is that’s happened to him, and he thinks that part of what makes it so terrible is the fact that he doesn’t understand it. If, perhaps, he could comprehend what had occurred, he wouldn’t be so fucking frightened anymore. If Mike could maybe do some research in those dusty old books of his, or - even better - if he could speak to the indiginous population of Derry, or whoever the fuck it was he was apparently so pally with - perhaps _they _could help, perhaps _they _could give some insight…

It’s all false hope, he knows though, borne of watching too many movies and reading too many books with racist caricatures of the Wise Old Indian in them. In reality, he’s certain that nobody, nobody in the world has a goddamn clue what happened to him, regardless of their ethnic origin or how many books they’ve read - least of all Mike, who, he gathers from his text messages, is satisfied with the outcome of their reunion in Derry, and is now eager to put the last forty years of his life behind him, and start afresh. Eddie can’t say he blames him in the slightest. 

He remains skittish around his wife - more skittish than before - flinching away whenever she lays a hand on him, backing out of the room when her eyes linger too long. She notices - she must notice, he thinks - but she does not say anything. She does not ask. 

Still, something between them has changed; not that their relationship was ever all sunshine and roses to begin with. It had been a practical union, one that was made official five years prior, almost immediately following the death of his mother, and which to Eddie had felt almost like play-acting for the entirety of that time. 

He remembers (now he remembers, oh god _now _he remembers a lot of things from his childhood that had previously been buried beneath blood and rubble and dust) playing house in kindergarten once or twice with a little girl with tight blonde curls, who’d marched up to him on one of his first days there, and asked him to play in the playhouse with her. 

“You be the daddy and I’ll be the mommy,” she’d said, dragging him in after her by the hand. Then she’d picked up the plastic baby doll by the top of its head and began stirring an empty pot on the wooden stove. He hadn’t known _how _to play house - he didn’t have a daddy, he’d wanted to say (he hadn’t; he didn’t know this little girl, and didn’t want anybody to think he was weird) and so he’d stood there awkwardly, and waited for her to direct him to pick up the old leather briefcase, no doubt donated by someone’s father, to greet her with a “Honey, I’m home!”, to ask her how her day had been. 

He’d done all this, going through the motions, feeling increasingly awkward, until a little boy with floppy brown hair and a stutter had stuck his head through the window and asked him if he wanted to play kickball instead.

Now, when he thinks back on this particular incident, and similar incidents which had followed (the same girl had asked him to play house again, a few times, and it had always played out in the same uncomfortable manner, until eventually she’d stopped asking and had begun pursuing the jovial and amicable David Sanders instead), and it makes his insides churn, how similarly his adult married life is unfolding. 

Every morning, Myra has to tell him to kiss her. 

Every evening, Myra says to him, “Aren’t you going to ask me about my day?”

And every time, he dutifully obeys. 

She says these things to him every day, he thinks to himself, and yet he can’t remember to do it the next; he just can’t. He’s so stupid. It’s like trying to force himself to write with the wrong hand. 

The difference, however, between life before his return to Derry and now, is that the awkward stasis of his existence, of his marriage to Myra, no longer seems like the only option. He feels incredibly idiotic for not realising that relationships were not a duty, not simply the done thing (and he knows, deep down, he recognises that really, he’s always known this, that being married to a woman was not the _only _option, and certainly not the correct option for _him_; he’s just scared - has always been scared.)

But now he thinks back on how Ben and Bev were around one another, about how, even now, years later, Ben still looks at her with that soft, fond gaze, supports her quietly, never asks for or expects anything in return - and how Bev welcomes his touches, smiles at him as though there’s a magnificent secret they’re sharing, talks about him with a warmth and a heartbreaking kind of delight, as though she never suspected someone could love her as purely and kindly as Ben Hanscom does. 

And he also thinks, when it’s late at night, and he’s alone in the dark, clenching around the loneliness he feels more keenly now than ever before, of Richie, his stupid jokes and his wide, toothy grin, of his big hands and broad shoulders and long legs, how - both as children and adults - he was always reaching for Eddie, always checking up on him, wrapping strong fingers around his wrist, pressing a palm to his face, how he’d settled the fluttering fear in Eddie’s stomach like it was nothing…

He thinks about that last night in Derry too, of how the rest of the world had caved in and faded away until existence was nothing but Richie’s big, warm body beside him and then above him, Richie’s voice, softened by the dull glow of the table lamp and the silence of the town outside the window -

“I’m head over goddamn heels for you, Eds. Always have been.”

Richie loves me, he thinks, only when he’s on his own, in the dark, late at night. Richie loves me; Richie is in love with me.

The thought always closes his throat up. 

And then, because he cannot help himself, he starts to think about how Myra has never said anything like that to him; how Myra has never made him feel the way even _thinking _about Richie does, like his soul is levitating, like he’s melting; how she’s never made him laugh, about how reuniting with Richie was like picking up exactly where they’d left off - about how easily they’d squabbled, shoved one another good-naturedly, about how he’s never been afraid around Richie - well, he has, but it was never Richie’s _presence _causing or contributing to the fear; in fact, Richie made him braver. Richie thinks _he _is brave, and has said so.

Myra doesn’t think he’s brave. Myra, like Eddie, believes he’s fragile, like a delicate glass figurine, or a china cup, one that must be handled carefully, if at all, kept away from potential dangers on a high shelf or in a cabinet. 

He supposes she’s not to blame for that. His mother had spent so long convincing him of his perpetual sickness, of brittle bones, a poor immune system, a weak heart - and even after discovering the truth, after Greta Keene’s revelation to him that summer day in the pharmacy, after finding that he could be brave, brave for his friends, down in the sewers - he had swallowed her lies whole. He’d forgotten, once they’d moved to New York, that he wasn’t really sick, but even when he was still living in Derry, just a few days after Pennywise had crawled back into It’s well, he’d acquiesced to his mother’s wishes and started taking the medicine again. The reality was that it was easier to just accept what she wanted, to not put up a fight, to nod his head, say, “Yes, mommy,” and be her good little boy again.

Myra, he tells himself, just believes what he believes; she has never had any reason not to. 

Only, he begins to realise, there are other things that she does - things he does not like, and has never liked, and acknowledging this feels wicked, feels like a betrayal of her, feels cruel to even _think _about, that there are things about her and about their relationship he doesn’t like - and once he’s started to accept them not as unalterable facts of life and things that he must simply accept about marriage, but as things she does which perhaps add to the feeling of discomfort and unease he’s now up to his neck in, he finds he cannot stop. 

Like his mother, Myra wants him home all the time. Sometimes she cites his poor health, which is understandable - he recalls saying that he wanted to take tennis lessons, a few years back, and she’d acted like he’d said he wanted to go free diving with a great white shark. Two great white sharks. His asthma, she'd said, eyes wide, like she couldn't believe he was suggesting it, would not allow for that kind of exertion. He doesn’t really have friends, outside his work friends, and even calling them that is a bit of a stretch; she never wants him to go drinking with them after office hours, and on the odd occasion when he’d resisted, she’d always spent the evening blowing up his phone, then when he’d come home had either given him the cold shoulder or clung to him, crying about some terrible drama with her friends or family, which she always seemed to have forgotten about when he asked after it the next day. Sometimes too she insists that he’s told her things, or neglected to tell her things, and when he cannot for the life of him remember saying (or not saying) them, she cries, accusing him of being unkind and thoughtless. 

He always apologises - it’s just easier that way. Besides, he never, ever wants to be cruel to anyone; he spent enough of his childhood being demeaned and made to feel uncomfortable, and it makes him feel ill, to think of putting anybody else in that position, even inadvertently. So he says sorry, and she is pacified, until the next time they disagree, or he tries to do something without telling her. 

One day, at work, whilst he’s on his lunch break, he takes out his phone, glancing surreptitiously over both shoulders to make sure no-one is looking, before Googling _Should I get a divorce? _He reads about three of the articles that pop up before he’s breathing shallowly and has to put the phone down for fear that he is about to start shaking hard enough for people around him to notice. 

The day afterwards, thinking back to his and Bev’s phone call, he searches _Am I being abused? _He gets through even fewer of these results, managing two webpages before he’s pushing his phone across his desk and striding down the corridor to the bathroom, where he locks himself in a cubicle and hyperventilates for the next five minutes. 

That night, he drives home but cannot get out of his car. He sits in the garage, motionless, staring at the dashboard, thinking of the articles now burnt into his search history. 

Sometimes Myra checks his phone. Never in a malicious way - she doesn’t try to hide it - but she knows his passcode and will at times use his phone instead of her own. 

He pulls up his internet browser; deletes both the searches and the pages he’d read. He thinks about clearing his cookies for good measure, but perhaps that would be even more suspicious; having nothing there.

He stares down at the phone that is trembling in his palm for one long minute, then he calls Bev. 

It rings and rings and rings, and he is certain that she isn’t going to pick up - what time, he asks himself, is it in Chicago? - then suddenly -

“Hey, Eddie - are you okay?”

“She doesn’t hit me,” he blurts out, then winces at how loud his voice is in the car; at the fact he’s even putting this shameful thing into words.

Bev doesn’t answer for a long moment, and Eddie suddenly feels even more terrible. What, he thinks, is he doing, calling Bev, whose spouse _has _hit her, who has even bigger problems than he does to deal with, who is probably still at work and doesn’t have time to listen to him bitch and moan about this shit -

“Eddie,” Bev says, gently, “are you talking about your wife?”

Eddie swallow; breathes in, deeply. “Yeah,” he says. 

“I’m glad she doesn’t hit you,” Bev says. “But, I mean, you called me - did you wanna talk about...are there maybe other things she does?”

Eddie doesn’t speak. An eternity seems to pass by. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Bev says, eventually. “It’s okay.”

Eddie says, slowly, shakily. “I don’t know. I think so.” He pauses. “It doesn’t matter.”

Bev says, “It does,” softly, like she’s worried if she speaks too loudly she’ll frighten him off. 

Eddie hesitates. One of the lights at the other end of the garage is flickering. At last he says, “I’m not happy, Bev.”

“I’m sorry,” Bev says. She sounds it, too; she’s so genuine, so wonderful, so kind. Eddie loves her, painfully. “Eddie, I’m so sorry. But I’m glad you felt like you could talk to me about it.”

“Thanks,” he says. He wants to say, thanks for listening, or, thanks for being here, or even, thanks for being my friend, but something has cut his vocal chords off; stuffed his throat with emotion. 

They sit on the phone for a while, just listening to one another breathing. “What are you going to do?” Bev says, eventually. 

Eddie breathes in, slowly. There’s a headache starting to gather right behind his eyes. When he goes up to the apartment, he thinks, he’ll take an Advil and go straight to bed. Maybe if he pretends it’s worse than it is, Myra will leave him alone. It’s a fucked-up thought, he realises; half the time he’s at home he’s just wondering whether he’ll be able to avoid her. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

They both fall quiet. Eddie briefly considers telling Bev about Richie; about what he’d said to him, about how he made him feel - about how men in general make him feel - but he doesn’t. He promised he wouldn’t say anything about Richie beng gay, and the idea of saying something about himself and his desires is almost too insurmountable a task to comprehend. 

“You can talk to me whenever you want,” Bev tells him. “Any of us - you know that. We all care about you Eddie.”

Eddie says, “Everyone has their own shit going on.”

“I know,” Bev says, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to us. We’re your friends. We love you.”

Eddie closes his eyes. “Love you too, Bev,” he says. 

She stays on the phone with him, not saying a word, until he’s ready to leave his car and go inside. 

*

Things finally come to a head just two days later.

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and he’s sat on the couch, trying to focus on the book he’s currently reading, when his phone goes off. It’s a message from Richie, in the group chat. It’s totally unexpected, and when he sees what it actually says, it knocks him for six. 

It says, _Hey, just so we’re all on the same page here I want to be clear that I am in no way heterosexual. _Then, seconds later, another message comes through: _As in I am gay._

Eddie’s mouth falls open. To be fair, he hasn’t spoken to Richie much over the last few days - only snipping at each other once or twice in the group chat - so he wouldn’t have had any clue Richie was considering doing this, but still. He cannot believe he’s letting them know so casually. 

_Thats right, _Richie’s next message reads,_ I was fucking your dads this whole time. _Then, finally, _Oh btw this isn’t exactly public lol so if anything pops up in one of the tabloids I will know one of you is a rat!!!!! _The message ends with a rat emoji. 

Eddie blinks down at his phone. He wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what. How, he thinks, how to convey the warm, all-consuming rush of love and pride for his friend he feels in that moment? He wants Richie to know how happy he is for him; how pleased and proud, how much he cares. How, he asks himself, how can he put the breadth and depth of that love into words?

Another message flashes up, this one from Mike.

_Rich I am so proud of you. We all love you so much. Ps you absolutely didn’t fuck my dad you weirdo._

Eddie grins; he can’t help it. 

Myra appears in the doorway on the other side of the room. “What are you doing?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” Eddie says. He can’t look away from his phone. He needs to say something. 

Richie sends back, _Srry I meant your grandpa. _

Mike says, _Oh my god, _just as Bev’s message - _I love you I love you I love you!!! _\- pops up. 

A few more moments pass, then Bill’s response - a long, soppy, rambling one comes through, filled with affirmations and assurances, ending with the words: _I know you will probably just roll your eyes at this but just know you are so loved and we are all so proud of you. You are so brave Rich and I am so so happy for you and proud to be your friend. _

Myra sits down in the armchair across from him. She says, “Who are you talking to?”

Eddie, still trying to come up with something heartfelt and meaningful he can say to Richie, says, distractedly. “Just some friends.”

“Do I know them?”

In response to Bill’s reply, Richie sends a couple more emojis; this time, the one with the green face, holding back vomit, and the one barfing. 

Bill says, _Why do I bother. _

“They’re - they’re my friends I saw the other week. From Derry.”

“Hmm,” Myra says. 

Quickly, Eddie sends his own message to the group - just a silly, short one, something he hopes will make Richie laugh, nothing like Bill’s or Mike’s - then he gets up, and goes to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. 

He closes the lid of the toilet, and sits down there, opening up his private text thread with Richie. 

He waits a moment, listening for Myra, as though she might hear the words he’s about to type through the door - though there’s nothing _wrong _with what he’s about to say, nothing she could possibly get upset about, surely - then, with slightly trembling hands, he puts: _Hey Richie. I know you want us all to think you’re real tough and cool and that wasn’t a big deal, but I know it was. And I’m really proud of you and happy for you. I mean it. It was so brave._ Then he hits send. 

A moment passes, then the three dot animation pops up on the left-hand side of the screen. Eddie watches it avidly. 

_Thanks Eds, _Richie says._ I am tough and cool but you’re right I guess it kind of was a big deal._

Eddie shakes his head, but he’s smiling. He can’t stop - he’s so happy for Richie, so proud of him he feels like his heart will burst. Richie is brave, he thinks. But then again, Richie’s always been brave. He thinks about him, the knobbly-kneed, loudmouth kid who’d taken on a shapeshifting extraterrestrial nightmare with nothing but a baseball bat, who’d pulled Eddie against his chest when he’d broken his arm, cupping his face and insisting he look at him as the clown had advanced like his own back wasn’t exposed to the looming danger, who’d spat back at Bowers and his gang numerous times throughout their childhood, insistent on protecting Eddie and their other friends, even if it meant getting his glasses snapped or a busted lip in return for his troubles. Eddie had always wished that he’d been like that; still does, truth be told. 

Before he can second-guess himself, he types out, _I wish I was as brave as you _and hits send,just as Richie texts back, _I’m glad you’re my friend. _

Eddie blinks, feeling weirdly choked-up, and suddenly, he wants nothing more than to be there with Richie; to tell him in person how brave he is, to let him know how pleased he is, despite everything, that they’ve been reunited; to look into those smiling hazel eyes and feel the weight of Richie’s big arm across his shoulders. 

Richie says: _You are brave, Eds. Braver than me, _which is absolute bullshit, but sweet of him to say. Eddie smiles, wondering if he’s going to cry.

There’s a sudden, sharp rap on the bathroom door. 

“Eddie?” Myra says, her voice high and worried, muffled slightly by the thick wood of the door. “Are you alright? What are you doing in there?”

_You are brave, Eds,_ Richie’s message reads, there in his hand, in grey and black. “You’re braver than you think,” he’d said, down in the sewers beneath Derry. 

Eddie closes his eyes; recalls the warmth of Richie’s hand on his face; the way Bev had stood up to her father and was now standing up against her husband; how Bill had lead them all so bravely, so willing to sacrifice his own life for theirs, so committed to honouring Georgie; how Mike had stayed in that hateful town, watching and waiting, trusting that one day his friends would rise to the occasion and return to him; how Ben had loved, patiently, kindly, wanting nothing in return, only wanting for the others to be happy, for Bev to be happy; Stan’s sweetness, and wit, and fear, his smile all those years ago in the Barrens, telling Bill he hated him, then breaking into laughter, grinning at them all. He remembers too his mother; telling her he wasn’t going to take any more of her pills; how he wasn’t sick; how he loved his friends and they loved him too, purely, like love should be. He remembers forgetting. 

_You are brave, Eds. _

Eddie inhales, deep and slow. He stands up. The walk from the toilet to the bathroom door feels like miles; and yet it is over in the blink of an eye. His head is spinning.

He opens the door.

“Myra,” he says, and his voice is shaking, and his hands are shaking, and his stomach is doing backflips, but he refuses to give in - not now. “We need to talk.”

*

Richie sits back on the sofa, heart still in his throat. It pulses there, like a separate living entity, slimy and sickly, poised to leap from his mouth, splatter across his coffee table and the hardwood floor below. 

He feels a little lightheaded. It’s almost impossible to comprehend what he’s just done; what he’s just said; what he’s just revealed of himself, peeling back his ribs and all that flesh and sinew beneath to bare everything to the air, to his friends, the truth at the core of his being - the _secret, _the _dirty little secret -_

It had been Mike who’d texted back first - kind, strong Mike, who’d told him that he was proud of him, that they loved him, all of them, a sentiment Bev had echoed only moments later, then Bill, whose sickly-sweet message was packed with assurances and affirmations that make Richie’s throat tighten up, just a little bit. 

He’d known - just _known _\- that they’d all be okay with it; that none of his friends would treat him any differently, known it in a somewhat removed, distant way, like he knew that the Earth moved round the sun, that the ice caps were melting, that dinosaurs existed once and that baby horses were able to run within an hour of being born. That was to say, he’d known it was true without having experienced anything to necessarily prove it to his own level of understanding and comprehension of the world, and so, when things had come down to the wire, he’d felt that sudden jerk of fear; the rug twitching ominously beneath his feet; the idea, insidious and sickening, had sprung upon him that perhaps things _wouldn’t _be okay, that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that these people he loved so dearly only cared for him conditionally. That maybe when he spilt his shameful secret out for everyone to see, they’d back up and turn away, or stare at him in heavy, painful silence, like all the other kids had done that day in the arcade, all those years ago…

It feels somewhat silly now, with the way his phone is trembling in his palm almost continuously with kind messages and sweet assurances - but it doesn’t make that old lick of fright any less real. 

Richie’s hands are still shaking, just a bit. Adrenaline, he thinks. 

Eddie texts back, too; doesn’t say anything, just sends the pride flag, then a pink heart, and then, inexplicably, the emoji of the two boys with rabbit ears dancing side by side. _That_, oddly enough, is what gets him, and he finds himself grinning, wiping a tear from his eye as he sends back a couple of spaghetti emojis. 

Then he types, _Well, I guess we know who the republican is now!!! Bill u have my apologies I assumed it would be you...Ben I can’t believe you’re a raging homophobe…you think you know a guy…_

Bill writes, _Why the fuck did you think I was a Republican?_

Another message pops up at the top of his screen; a private one this time. He opens it. 

It’s from Eddie. 

Richie suddenly feels shaky all over again. 

He had left Derry shortly after Eddie did - Rosie, as predicted, had booked his flight within an hour of him getting off the phone with Steve, one that left Bangor just after lunch time, and even if it hadn’t departed until the evening, he thinks he would still have left town just as fast. 

Even now, several weeks later, he can’t stop thinking about the way they’d all looked at him after Eddie had departed - Bill and Bev and Ben, and Mike, later, when they’d met up for breakfast in a greasy little diner overlooking the canal - with sorrowful, piteous eyes, like they felt sorry for him, like they knew he was sad, like they knew his _secret -_

_I know your secret, your dirty little secret!_

And it had been harrowing and horrifying, the notion that they might know, that they might have guessed his hidden shame, but somehow it was worse, he'd thought, later, once he was back in LA and less weighed down by the misery of Derry and the bone-shattering impact of Eddie leaving him once again - it was worse that they might know without him telling them. That they might suspect it - the fact that he was gay, that he liked men, that he loved _Eddie _\- but, worse, know that he was too goddamn cowardly to tell them himself. It had hurt him deeply, the idea that his friends might have thought he didn’t trust them enough, love them enough to share something like that with them; hurt because it was not true, and yet it was. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever said the words “I’m gay” before, not ever - not until that night in the hotel room with Eddie, and not again until now. 

He’s fucked around with guys, of course he has, but that awkward coming-out stage is avoided when you’re hanging out in darkened gay bars where the music is too loud and sets your bones trembling, or scrolling through black and yellow hookup apps; it’s the whole reason you’re there, after all. 

He’d spent all of that somber breakfast miserably checking his phone, waiting for his flight confirmation to come through, studiously avoiding all eye contact and side-stepping any attempts the others had made to engage him in conversation. And when the message from Rosie had arrived he’d leapt from his seat as though scorched, clapped everyone on the back, telling them he’d stay in touch, and left the diner without looking back. 

He’d almost left Derry without looking back, too - only on the way out of town he’d spotted it, the ugly red covered bridge, the faded wooden railings. And he’d felt beneath his hands the memory of the splinters, the give of the wood as he’d carved two letters into it. And before he’d known what he was doing, he was pulling over and getting out of the car, and heading, as though in a trance, to that childish marking, that innocent declaration of affection. 

He’d found it as easily as if he’d carved the letters the previous day. 

_R + E. _

The edges of his clumsy hacking had softened, rounded and erroded by the steady drag of time and the sting of twenty seven Maine winters - wind and rain and snow - but it was still there, that innocent, stupid, brave declaration of his feelings, the insistence that they were real and had as much legitimacy and right to be declared as any other stupid couple’s on that bridge.

_Jack + Georgia. T & L 4 eva. Katie loves Brett._

Why not his love?

He’d been filled, suddenly, with a warm rush of affection for his younger self, who was so brave, and so idiotic, thinking nothing of carving his and another boy’s initials into eternity just a day after being threatened in the arcade, and he’d wondered what young Richie would have made of things if he’d gotten a good look at the way he was now. 

Not much, he’d thought to himself.

He probably would have been disappointed. 

Forty years old, and still hiding it away, hiding everything away, like it’s dirty, like it’s something to be ashamed of. 

The desire to make things right, to do something his younger self would have been proud of for once in his miserable fucking life had gripped him, quite suddenly, and he’d stumbled back to his rental car and fished around until, in the pocket of his jacket which languished on the back seat, he’d found his Swiss army knife. 

The wood had been softer, giving with a little more ease beneath the pressure of his fingertips - or perhaps he was just stronger, his fingers bigger - and the older carving, his underpainting, eased the way. When he’d finished, the letters seemed to loom louder and prouder than any others scored into the fence, and for a moment, he’d felt that old thud of fear, deep inside his chest. 

He’d seen the story on the local news that morning.

He knew what towns like Derry did to guys like him. 

But the sawed-up railing was firm beneath his hands, warm from being pressed and held still under his palm, and he’d liked it; the physical manifestation of how he felt, of those feelings that had never gone away, an ode to his younger, braver self - and, despite the tears in his eyes and the gathering clouds overhead, Richie had smiled. 

Later that day, Mike had created the group chat, then sent a message there asking Eddie to let them all know once he’d landed safely in New York, and that same evening, Eddie had told them he was home, and that it had been good to see them all, and that was that. 

It had been a weird ending to a couple of days which had culminated in Eddie being impaled by a space clown and somehow surviving. Watching him leave had felt like watching a dud firework sputtering out after being lit, failing to launch, slanting in soft ground and then toppling to its side.

They’d exchanged pleasantries with the others in the group imaginatively named _The Losers’ Club. _

Eddie had mentioned being back at work. Richie had sent back a jumble of letters, and when Eddie had replied with a single question mark, Richie had apologised for falling asleep on his phone. Eddie had told him to fuck off. 

Mike had ordered them to cut it out, or they would both be kicked out of the group. 

Sometimes Richie will see something that reminds him of Eddie, something he thinks Eddie would like, or he’ll think of a joke that would make nobody but Eddie laugh, and he thinks about calling him - but he never does. He wants to, desperately, but every time he comes close, hovers his thumb over that call icon, he thinks of Eddie’s voice from behind the bathroom door that last day in Derry, of the way he’d looked when he’d emerged and fallen immediately to his knees to pack his suitcases, of how wound-tight and antsy he’d been out on the steps with Bev, so clearly desperate to flee. 

It’s miserable, he always thinks - then he thinks about the alternative, and hates himself. 

He looks back down at his phone. 

Eddie’s message - the private one - says, _Hey Rich. I know you want us all to think you’re real tough and cool and that wasn’t a big deal, but I know it was. And I’m really proud of you and really happy for you. I mean it. It was really brave. _

It takes everything Richie has in him not to send back something inane and stupid, some kind of deflection - but it’s just Eddie, he tells himself; just Eddie. He can be honest with Eddie. He thinks of their last night together, in his hotel room. And regardless of what had happened afterwards when Eddie’s phone had vibrated, of the following morning, when he’d hidden in the bathroom then come out pale and subdued and changed - nothing can take those quiet, golden, glowing moments between them away, Richie thinks, when Eddie had looked up at him with soft eyes, mouth lifted in a hesitant smile, breath hitching when Richie had cupped his jaw. It happened. It was real. 

And so he summons every ounce of courage and authenticity he possesses, and he taps out, _Thanks Eds. I am tough and cool but you’re right I guess it kind of was a big deal. _He sends it, then he hesitates, finally adding, _I’m glad you’re my friend, _right at the same moment Eddie sends back, _I wish I was as brave as you. _

For a moment, Richie’s heart freezes. He stares at the message in the little grey bubble, trying to work out if it means what he thinks it means. Then he realises - no - no, of course it doesn’t. Eddie just means brave in general. Eddie thinks he’s a coward; always has done, for reasons Richie cannot fathom, because Eddie genuinely is one of the bravest people Richie knows. 

He’s just wishing and projecting, he tells himself. 

He says, _You are brave, Eds. Braver than me, _and then Ben pops up in the group chat to tell him that he loves him and is proud of him, and that he was on a call, and he’s definitely _not _a Republican. 

That is how Richie Tozier comes out to his friends. 

It feels - okay. It feels pretty good. 

*

As promised, he’d gone out for lunch with Steve the day after he’d arrived back in California. Steve had booked a table at a nice Japanese restaurant, somewhere he must have taken other clients before, because the waiter had greeted him by name, and the manager had popped out from the kitchen to say hi, and they’d been brought green teas and spicy edamame on the house. Richie had felt hollowed out, mashed-up and rotten, like a half-used avocado. 

He’d thought this, and then he’d thought about how LA had changed him, and then he’d groaned, pitching his head forwards to land in his upturned palms. 

Steve had tried to cheer him up, talking to him about upcoming shows, sharing bits of industry gossip he normally wouldn’t let Richie know about, given the size of his mouth and the speed at which it moved - but Richie had just stared at him across the table top, stuffing gyoza into his mouth whenever he felt the tears rising to the back of his throat. 

He didn’t want to talk about Stan, and he didn’t want to talk about Eddie, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about Pennywise, and he didn’t want to think about any of it either. In the end, Steve had given up, and they’d eaten quietly, not speaking. 

“Let me know if you need a break, Rich,” he’d said, once he’d paid the bill, and they’d gotten up, and collected their jackets. “You can - just go away for a bit, if you want. I mean it.”

Richie had wanted to say yes - wanted little else, in fact - but he’d known that if he’d done that he would have ended up laying on his back on the couch, wasting away from sadness. And he wasn’t about to survive the second killer clown attack of his life only to sink and suffocate amongst his sofa cushions. So he’d shook his head, and said he was okay, and he just wanted to move on. 

Steve hadn’t looked convinced, but hadn’t pushed the matter. 

And so things had, improbably, gone back to normal, sort of. 

He had a couple of shows booked in Reno, which he flew out for, and which he performed on auto-pilot, feeling like he wasn’t really there, like he was sat within his skull, watching himself tell jokes and made-up stories from behind glazed eyes. The audience had laughed and applauded, and the local press had given him lukewarm reviews which he couldn’t have cared less about. He’d thought on the flight up there that he might throw in a little improv, say something about his disappearance, about sewer clowns and recovered childhood memories and what it had been like growing up in a town in the middle of fucking nowhere that was basically the setting of every true crime documentary ever made - but when it came down to it he didn’t. He couldn’t. 

So he’d flown back to LA again and avoided the questions that continued to flood into his Twitter mentions, the demands shouted at him by ravenous paparazzi, and headed straight down the 405 to Beverly Hills, straight to Steve’s office without pausing to drop his shit off at home first.

Rosie had been chatting to the receptionist when he’d burst in, feeling like his eyes were stretched far too wide open. She’d actually jumped at the noise. 

“Richie,” she’d said, frowning at him. “Are you alright?”

Richie had said, “Where’s Steve?” 

Rosie had looked at him like he’d grown an extra head. Three extra heads. “Upstairs. I don’t have a meeting for you in his diary today -” But Richie was already gone, clear across the room, taking the steps two at a time. 

Steve had also looked concerned when Richie had appeared, waving manically through the clear class walls of his office, startling the other agents and assistants who sat scattered across the room at their own desks, sequestered in their own glass boxes. He was on the phone, but Richie saw his lips form the words, “I’ll call you back,” into the mouthpiece before putting it back down. 

Richie had opened the door; invited himself in. 

“Rich,” Steve had said, “What the fuck?”

“I don’t wanna do the rest of the tour,” Richie had said, the words he’d really wanted to say tangling in his throat, tying themselves into tight knots before he could get them out. “I don’t - I can’t. Telling jokes about - tits, and girlfriends, and all that shit. Someone - someone else’s jokes, I mean. I can’t fucking do it. I’ll go fucking insane, man.”

Steve had fixed him with a long, careful look.

“I’m sorry,” Richie said. “Tell the others I’m sorry, man, no disrespect to them. But the shit they’ve been giving me - it’s not fucking funny.”

Steve had sighed, leaning back in his chair and gesturing to the free seat across from him. 

Richie, feeling like he had been summoned to the principal’s office - not for the first time in his life - had sat. 

“Richie,” Steve said, slowly, carefully adjusting the pad of paper positioned beneath his computer keyboard so he could make notes whilst he was on the phone. “I’m gonna ask you something. And I want you to answer me truthfully.”

Richie’s heart had stopped. He’d felt like he was about to throw up.

“Okay,” he’d managed to croak out. 

Steve said, “Rich, have you been taking anything?”

Richie had blinked. “Taking?” he’d said. 

Steve had huffed impatiently. “You know what I’m asking,” he’d said. “Are you on drugs?”

“Oh,” Richie had sat back in his seat. That was not what he had been expecting. “No.”

Steve eyed him suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“You’re not back on coke? We’re not there again, are we? You would tell me if you were?”

“Steve,” Richie said, “I’m not on fucking coke, man.”

Steve had regarded him a moment longer, staring at his face like he thought that if he looked for long enough, Richie would slip up and reveal he was using once more. 

Richie stayed as still as he could, feeling oddly guilty, like he _had _been snorting line after line of cocaine, rather than sitting around in his hotel room in Reno, ordering room service and watching shitty comedies on the television, feeling sorry for himself then falling asleep with his glasses on.

Finally, Steve had sighed, and began spinning his pen slowly between his fingers. 

“So you wanna cancel the rest of your shows,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Richie said. He’d hesitated. “Sorry.”

Steve had propped his elbow on the surface of his desk; rested his jaw against his knuckles. “Is this because of what happened with your friend?”

Richie had thought of Stan; thought of Eddie. He’d thought of all the others, and lastly of himself. 

“Kind of,” he’d said.

Steve hadn’t said anything; just looked at Richie like he was waiting for him to finish. 

“I guess,” he’d said, hesitantly, “I guess when he - when Stan died I just - kind of started thinking about, like, shit. Thinking about everything more carefully. And like, I don’t wanna go up there and perform shit I didn’t write, or shit I’m not proud of. I owe it to him - to myself, really. I’m sick of being lazy, doing whatever’s easiest. I don’t wanna read someone else’s...sexist crap. No offence to John and Kenny, but -”

“Alright,” Steve said. He’d eyed Richie carefully. Richie had thought that he could almost see him running the numbers mentally. “Are you talking about your next show in particular? Or -”

“All of it.”

“All of it,” Steve says. “Right.” He’d tapped his pen slowly against the edge of the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

"Dude," Richie said, "I'm sorry." He’d meant it too; he was sorry Steve was going to have to, once again, deal with the fallout of his bad decisions and poor behaviour; sorry he hadn't been more honest and upfront from the get-go; sorry he was such a fucking coward, sorry for himself and his friends and all the other kids growing up in tiny shithole towns who were too afraid to let the world know who they were. 

Steve, sighing again, had said, "It's okay, Rich. I get it." He’d fixed Richie with a hard, thoughtful stare. "We'll have to put out a statement, though. Give a reason for the cancellations."

Richie said, "I don't want - I don't want to talk about Stan. I can't - I can't -"

"Alright. We'll leave that to Yolanda to deal with. I'll call her in a minute; see if she can put something together. But we have to give the venues something; I get it, I totally get it Rich, and I agree, I think you need some time off, but it's shitty of us to pull out so late."

Richie, unable to resist, had said "That's how I was conceived."

Steve said, "How you were - Richie, please shut the fuck up."

"Sorry. Listen, I'll write a new show. I'm not disappearing forever. Let me put something together, something good - can we tell wherever it is we have booked that they can have first refusal?"

"Maybe." Steve had rubbed one eye. "Maybe that'll work. If they'll have you back. If you manage to put something decent together. Let's not get ahead of ourselves." He turned back to his computer, unphased, all business. He’s great, Richie had thought. "Right, I'm gonna call Anna now, give her a heads-up we're about to breach contract - I'll ask Yolanda to phone you later. Fuck, Rich."

"Sorry," Richie had said, again.

"It's okay. I get it." 

Richie didn’t think he did, not really, but he’d stayed quiet.

"I think maybe you need to talk to someone, man."

"I'm fine," Richie had said, automatically, although privately he had been thinking the same thing.

Steve had looked at him, his expression one of doubt, though he did not push the matter. 

"You're not, but I'm not gonna argue with you. I'll tell the venues you've had a bereavement and need to take some time off. We'll put out a statement later. Everyone's gonna assume it's a cover, and you've actually had a breakdown or something, especially after Chicago - you're gonna get a lot of attention. You okay with that?" 

Richie’d said, "Yeah," although he wasn’t. It wasn't like he could do anything about it, after all. That kind of speculative shit came with the territory.

"Alright. You might wanna lay low a couple days. And don't start posting shit on Twitter without running it past Yolanda and I first, got it?"

"Got it," Richie had said, though he was sure he would immediately forget this promise.

"Okay. I'll call you later; let you know how it goes. Do _not _speak to any press without checking in first, alright?"

"Alright."

Steve had sighed in that long-suffering way he always did around Richie; looked at him thoughtfully. 

"I mean it when I say you should think about going back to therapy," he’d said. "I know you hate it but I think it'd be good for you to have somebody to talk to."

Richie had said, noncommittally, "I guess it would." 

There was no way, he’d thought, he could speak about Stan; no chance he was going to talk to anyone about Eddie. And what the fuck would he say about the goddamn clown? No thanks, he had thought. He would do what he always did; bottle that shit up until it was compressed low in his stomach, crammed at the back of his mind. He knew it wasn’t healthy - he wasn’t stupid - but the notion of laying everything out on the table for some stranger, letting them see him naked and ashamed was frankly horrifying. Even when he was getting clean a few years back and _had _to attend therapy, he’d felt like he was operating in those sessions with only half of himself. 

The therapist had surely known, he thinks now, looking back, that there were things he was hiding, but she hadn't pressed; she was a therapist based in LA, specialising in substance abuse, he reminds himself - she would have been accustomed to half-truths, to obfuscation - Richie could lie and omit and bluff and that was her accepted reality. That was the reality of everyone working in his industry in that goddamn fucking town. She'd hardly pushed back on him at all. 

On very rare occasions he wishes she had.

In that bright, airy office, just after he’d gotten back from Reno, Steve had looked at him with an expression that had appeared to Richie to be comprised half from pity, half from patient exasperation. “Make sure you actually take some time off, Rich,” he’d said, gently. “Real time off. No crazy parties.” He was only half-joking, Richie had known. 

“Yeah,” Richie had said, hollowly. “Okay.”

“Take a hike. Go for a drive. Get laid. Pick up a new hobby. You ever tried surfing? Horseback riding? Just...have some downtime. Maybe get out of town for a bit. Tell me you’ll at least think about it?”

Richie had shrugged. He’d got what he wanted; he didn’t have to perform that painful, terrible, shitty show anymore. He could start again, he’d told himself; wipe the slate clean. 

Momentarily, he’d wished he could do the same with his life; or, if not that, his memories. 

“Sure,” he’d said, not meaning it. “I’ll try.”

*

Sleeping had been hard. 

It had never come easy to him, admittedly; once his brain had started to buzz with a thought, an idea, it could take hours, sometimes even days for it to vacate the space, and at times the chatter in his head grew so loud it made his skin physically tingle.

The way he’d slept - or hadn’t slept - after Derry was different though.

He’d fallen asleep, no matter how hard he fought against it. Then he would dream; the same dream every night. 

He was back in the sewers, back underneath Derry.

The clown, swollen and massive was rearing back, mouth torn wide open and spitting around the iron post lodged in its maw. Eddie was kneeling above him, touching his shoulders, his chest, his cheek. His face was lit up; delighted and hopeful and astonished at his own strength and bravery. 

And then, from nowhere, the claw. 

Every time it had felt like the bottom of his stomach had dropped out. 

Every time Eddie died in his arms, and then he was dragged backwards, out of the collapsing cave, the rotting house, screaming and crying and begging to be left there to expire too as he watched Eddie’s slumped, ruined body disappear behind falling chunks of rock, until he had faded from sight, and every time he’d woken up panting, gasping, trying to remember if what he’d seen in his dream was real or not. 

It _was _real, he always realised, every time, which had turned his stomach and made him retch over the side of the bed - but Eddie had made it back to them. _Eddie is alive_, he had told himself, and he’d always had to check his phone, check the group chat and the few private messages he had with the other man to reassure himself. Even so, without Eddie there in front of him, he’d found himself questioning, in the dark of night, whether it was another trick, despite the way he’d assured Bill that it wan’t, despite Mike’s insistence that It was dead.

He had always lain back down, slowly, curling up on his side in the sweat-soaked bedsheets, staring at Eddie’s contact details, fighting the urge to call him, wake him up from where he was asleep in New York, no doubt pressed close to his wife, who in Richie’s imagination oscillated between a cruel duplicate of his mother and Eddie’s soulmate, a sweet, laughing woman who was able to calm and comfort and relax him, who would never abandon him in the dark beneath the earthworms and rocks and sewer water. 

It had seemed so dreadfully cruel that Eddie had survived what he had survived, that Richie had got him back, and had gotten to hold him, kiss him, in the way he’d always dreamt of, for one night, only to have him torn away again, and by Eddie’s own volition. It was stupid, he had told himself, not to mention selfish, to imagine that just one night together after all those long years apart might be enough to convince Eddie that _Richie _was the one who loved him most, who could take care of him and hold him and love him the way he deserved...nevertheless he hadn’t been able to beat out that little flicker of hope that had sparked once again in his chest at the sight of the other man, that weak but hot flame that he had not been able to extinguish during childhood, that had driven him to carve their initials on the kissing bridge, and that would not let him rest, even years and years later. 

He had wondered - he could not help but wonder - what might have happened if he hadn’t been so fucking afraid, such a pathetic coward. What, he had asked himself, when the streets outside his home were silent and he was on his own, staring blindly into the darkness, might things have been like if he’d just told Eddie how he felt when he was thirteen? It might have freaked the other boy out; frightened him off, left Richie friendless and alone when Eddie - and, by extension, the rest of the Losers, realised how perverted he was, how his preferences were opening them up to even more hatred and ridicule, simply by association with him - but then again…

Eddie had not shied away when he’d told him he was gay that night in the Townhouse, and he had certainly not indicated any disgust when Richie had revealed how he felt about him; how he was in love with him, madly. On the contrary, Eddie had asked him to say it again; had allowed Richie to kiss him; had kissed back; had let Richie lay him out on the bed and touch him, and held him in return, kissing like he was starved for it. 

He was overwhelmed, Richie had told himself, again and again - he’d survived being impaled, he was in shock, he was running on adrenaline -

He’d kept coming back to the way Eddie’s hands had felt against his back; the little trembling breaths he’d let out, the way he’d sighed into his mouth, the way he’d said “God, yes,” when Richie had asked him if the way he was touching him was okay…

He had covered his eyes, rubbed them with his fingers and thumb until there were stars flying across the back of his lids. And he hadn’t known what to think.

The daytime hadn’t been much better. 

Several times, he’d found himself in the midst of doing something - just grabbing shit at the grocery store, or taking a shower, or trying to respond to emails - and had realised, with a start, that he’d zoned-out; that he’d been stood, or sat, wherever he was for a good five or ten minutes, his brain long-gone from his body, somewhere far away where even Richie couldn’t chase it.

He’d felt disconnected from the world, like it wasn’t real, or sometimes as though _he _wasn’t real. There were times he wondered if what had happened with the clown had been imagined by some deeply fucked-up part of his subconscious, or if he was still on coke, or if everything about himself and his life was a dream, and if he was really going to wake up at any moment, thirteen again, his face all out of proportion, summer about to begin and Georgie Denbrough’s disappearance haunting each and every step he and his friends took. 

He hadn’t been sure if that would have been a good thing or a bad thing. 

Bill had texted him, about two weeks after he’d arrived home, saying that he thought he had a bit of free time from work the following afternoon, and asking if he wanted to meet up for lunch.

Richie had closed the message without responding. 

He’d _wanted _to respond - of course he’d wanted to. He had missed his friends, and he loved them. Only - 

Only. 

It had felt terrible to admit it, but he was beginning to realise that, despite what he’d said back in Derry, what he’d told the others that last night in the Italian restaurant, the fact of the matter was he just wanted to forget. Wanted to forget everything - those missing years of youth, the torment Bowers had put him through, the names he’d been called, the silent, lonely longing for Eddie, the heat of their bare skin touching in Ben’s scratchy, swaying hammock, the clown, the stinking, hot sewers, the fear…

And, most wicked of all, not just that, all those long years ago, but his latest trip to Derry too, the memories of Stan, the knowledge that his friend was dead, Eddie’s blood, the way it had dribbled from his lower lip and onto Richie’s glasses, the crunch of a man’s skull beneath the axe he’d grabbed in the library and the impact of the blow rippling all the way up his arms and into his shoulders, the way his friends had pulled him out from under the Well House, how Eddie had looked in the low light of the hotel room after he’d clawed his way out from beneath the earth like something from a horror movie, how he’d felt in his arms, the way he’d stared up at him, twitchy and frightened in the cold light of morning after speaking to his wife on the phone, the fact that Eddie _had _a wife…

He needed to process it, he knew that, of course he did - needed to sort through the painful memories, place them into a narrative of sorts, confront the pain, feel every bite of it, every stretch, every sting, and let it go; accept himself, and accept that Eddie didn’t love him, and accept the terrible things that had happened, and extinguish that flame, put it out, move on -

Only, he didn’t know how.

Richie didn’t think he’d confronted a single thing once in his whole fucking life. 

He’d left Derry the moment he’d gotten that college acceptance letter; booked it out of there and never looked back. He’d been in relationships, and the second things got tough, the second his partner had pointed out how good he was at avoidance, how he never wanted to talk things through, confront whatever issues they’d been having, he’d walked. He’d never come out - not properly, not publically, not even when he first arrived in California for school and had no notion that one day his face would be on billboards and posters and in magazines, too afraid of the consequences, far more frightened of the handful of people who would sneer and grimace and spit out hate than he was buoyed by those who would surely accept him, celebrate him, or simply not care. He’d never fallen in love - not properly, not really, not like the first time - and the deeply romantic part of him had thought that this was because he was still in love with Eddie, had always been in love with Eddie, even when he’d forgotten him, and that was probably at least partly true; but another part of him knew it was because he’d never _allowed _himself to fall in love; had never peeled back the armour, had never stopped sidestepping, making jokes; had never wanted to be vulnerable and laid bare in front of another person - had never wanted to, and in any case had never known how. 

And then, that cocksucking, motherfucking, dick-faced, asshole clown had dug up and exposed the old bones of his childhood; the horrible memories of ridicule and self-hatred and fear, laid them bare before him, and, to his horror, he had been forced to face the fact that he hadn’t changed a bit - that he was forty years old, rich and more successful than he’d ever dreamt he might be - and yet still, at heart, he remained that pussy little kid hiding everything away, knowing he was, at all times, just a few too-honest words or glances from a beating, being thrown in a river, kicked to the curb, dropped, out on his ass, alone and hated and afraid. 

He hadn’t texted Bill back. He’d put his phone away, tears pricking at the back of his throat. And despite everything he’d said to his friends about not forgetting he’d wished, more than anything, that the memories would bleed away again. 

*

Just two nights after that terrifying, freeing, life-changing text to _The Losers’ Club, _Richie wakes up thrashing and yelling once more, covered in a thin film of cold sweat. 

His room is still and hot. The ceiling fan above his head rotates in slow, listless circles, aimlessly swirling the warm air round and around, and the salty scent of his own sweat makes him wrinkle his nose. 

He falls back against the pillow, his head tipping to one side. 

The digital clock on the nightstand tells him it’s 1.48am. He’s been asleep for less than two hours. 

He sighs, heavily. 1.48am. What time, he wonders, does that make it in New York?

Through the darkness, he sees Eddie above him, expression bright and hopeful. He sees the clown’s claw descending. He sees the spurt of blood; the anguish in those big, expressive eyes. 

He sees the rocks falling down, and the house caving in, and he doesn’t ever see Eddie again, because he is gone, abandoned to die beneath the earth. 

Abandoned to die by _him_.

No. _No. _He inhales hard. Eddie is not dead. Eddie is back, Eddie didn’t die, Eddie is safe and sound in New York, his wounds healing, far away from the rot and decay of Derry. 

He’s safe. 

He _is. _

Richie reaches out towards the clock, blindly groping around until he finds his glasses, and his phone. 

1.49am. 

4.49am in New York. 

Eddie is probably still asleep, in bed with his wife. 

The thought hurts more than it has any right to. 

Or maybe, he thinks, maybe Eddie is already up - perhaps he goes to the gym early in the morning, before work. Perhaps he is getting dressed, packing his bag, eating breakfast; something disgusting with a lot of wholegrain in it, and no dairy, probably. 

Richie sinks a little lower beneath the blankets, pulls up the Twitter app; sees nothing of interest. He sighs and opens YouTube instead, scrolling listlessly through his suggested videos.

There’s one in particular that immediately catches his eye; the thumbnail shows a large white bird, sitting on its perch, wings outspread. The title of the video is _Cockatoo Wants to Dance with Somebody!_

He presses play. 

It’s a funny video; the bird’s owner has some music on, a song by Whitney Houston. The bird is bopping up and down on the spot, head nodding in time with the beat. Halfway through the song, it seems to get really into it, flaring its feathers and opening its beak to squawk tunelessly over the lyrics. 

Despite the way his heart is still pounding and his stomach is still lurching, Richie finds the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. He’s always liked this song - not weird, _everyone _likes this song, really - but something about it has always made him feel warm inside, like it somehow meant more than a feel-good dance track DJs would blast in the club or at weddings when they wanted to get people moving really ought to. He’d wondered, for years, if it was a song he’d danced to at prom or something - he couldn’t remember going to prom, but he must have, surely - or if it was a track he’d listened to in the car with his mom or dad, but he thinks that he’d always known, somehow, deep down, that neither of these solutions were the answer. 

For years, he’d heard the song on the radio, and found himself grinning, a strange little pang in his chest, and had no idea why. 

Now, he recalls the scratch of bark against his flattened palms and bare knees, edging along a tree branch beneath the stars, peering in through a half-open window. 

He remembers a dark-haired boy in blue pyjamas nodding his head, humming along to an upbeat pop track, hopping from foot to foot, wiggling his arms, his hips, without any sense of rhythm whatsoever. He remembers laughing, unable to contain himself. He remembers a shriek, an angry yell, Eddie, cheeks bright red, telling him to fuck off, that he’d kill him if he told anyone about this, demanding to know what the fuck he was doing sitting outside his bedroom window staring in like a perv, and he remembers ignoring the little yank of pain that last statemet had caused, and instead asking him if he thought his mom would be interested in feeling the heat with somebody. 

Eddie had yelled again, and thrown a balled-up sweaty sock straight at Richie’s head. Richie had bowled his way into Eddie’s room anyway, and they’d ended up reading comics together, listening to music, humming along with the songs they knew, squabbling when Richie finished a page too quickly and wanted to turn over before Eddie reached the last panel.

That had been the night, Richie thinks, now, looking back, when he’d told Eddie he was going to be a comedian when he grew up. At least, he thinks it was then. They’d spent so much time together like that, just the two of them, cheerfully arguing over comic books and throwing various items of laundry at one another, that sometimes the memories were difficult to distinguish from one another as they melted back into his mind’s eye. 

Richie had told Eddie his dream, and Eddie, with a look of utmost pity and patience on his sweet face, had turned to him and said, completely deadpan, “But Rich, you have to be funny to be a comedian.”

Richie had gaped at him, he recalls, alone in his room, the silly bird video now over. Then he’d grinned, pressing in closer to Eddie’s side - they were alone, nobody could see, it was okay - and ruffled his hair, crowing, “Yowza! Eddie Spaghetti gets off a good one!” and Eddie had howled indignantly, and shoved Richie off him, and they’d ended up wrestling on the floor together, shrieking with laughter.

Mrs Kaspbrak couldn’t have been in that evening, he thinks, because she would definitely have come upstairs if she’d heard them carrying on like that, and insisted that they get up, and told Richie to go home - but that hadn’t happened. And so, eventually, they’d calmed down, and Eddie had rolled onto his back, flinging an arm up over his head, and he’d looked at Richie with this soft, curious expression on his face that had set his stomach churning and knocked his knees together in the way that looking at Eddie for too long always had, back in those days - still does now, in truth. And Richie had said, “What? Have I got something on my face?”

And Eddie, giggling, had just shook his head, and then he’d said, “You know I do think you’re actually pretty funny, Richie, you asshole.”

And Richie had been so surprised he hadn’t known what to say. 

He smiles now, thinking of that day, of that odd, sweet little exchange. And before he can ponder it too much, he copies the link to the dancing cockatoo video, and sends it to Eddie. 

He doesn’t expect Eddie to answer - at least not for a few hours, anyway - but not five minutes later there’s a buzz from somewhere close beside him, and he finds himself grabbing both his phone and his glasses again. 

Eddie says, _Cute! Hahah._

You’re cute, Richie thinks, but manages to resist the temptation to type it out. _He dances just like you, _he sends back instead. 

Eddie responds, _He wishes, _then adds the little emoji of the lady dancing in the red dress. 

Richie laughs out loud; types out _He yells like you too._

_I don’t yell! _Eddie says. 

Richie says, _Hmmm._

A moment passes. Richie wonders, briefly, what Eddie’s doing awake at this time. He wonders if he should ask him. His eyelids start to grow heavy. 

Another buzz; another message from Eddie. 

_Don’t stay up all night watching bird videos, _it says. _Go to sleep! They’ll still be there in the morning._

Richie hesitates; types, _Okay mom. _He sends it. Then he says, _Night Eds x. _He sends this too before he can second-guess the little x, but the moment it’s gone, he regrets it. He turns onto his side, feeling unbearably exhausted all of a sudden. He’s way too old, he tells himself, to be overthinking a fucking text message. 

His phone lights up one last time. 

_Night Rich x. _Then, _And don’t call me Eds!_

*

September drags on. October looms, steadily edging its way onto the horizon, but summer refuses to release its chokehold over California so easily. The heat hanging above LA like a too-thick blanket does not dissipate, and time to Richie begins to feel like gridlock.

Stan’s letter arrives. Judging by the postmarks on the envelope, it has spent some time getting lost in the US postal service, but the letter itself is dated the same day he’d received that terrible phone call from Mike. Richie tries not to think about what this means; what the letter actually is. 

He reads it anyway, even though just touching the thing fills him with dread, and by the time he reaches the foot of the page, he’s bawling. 

_Be proud._

Easy for Stan to say, he thinks, then he feels cruel. He doesn’t know what kind of demons had haunted his old friend in the dark of the night.

He wonders if Stan had known; whether Stan had seen the way he’d surely looked at other boys, at Eddie in particular; if he’d taken note of the way he’d always zeroed in on the smaller boy, acted out, played the fool, all to get Eddie’s attention, his gaze, the quick brush of his hand, the knock of his knee, a shove. 

Stan had always been quietly perceptive, he thinks, patient, observant; talents honed through hours of sitting still and quiet in the woods, the barrens, the fields, watching the birds and the wildlife, a hobby which had been roundly mocked by every single one of his friends - and yet he had persisted. 

Richie wishes he hadn’t made fun of him now; that he’d taken the time to sit with him and listen to the breeze in the long grass and the birdsong, even though at that age remaining still had burnt his muscles and zapped his brain. 

He thinks (hopes; he cannot bear the alternative) that Stan would have been kind about his infatuation, his attraction; that he would have sat quietly and listened to Richie’s woes, then perhaps told him to shut up when his introspection and self-pity got a little too saccharine. 

He thinks, thanks, Stanley, an echo of the words he’d said out loud, alone in the synagogue in Derry - and then he thinks, I’m sorry we couldn’t have been there for each other. 

He puts the letter away in one of the drawers in his office. Nevertheless, the words _be proud, _though hidden from view, continue to burn a hole in the wood, bore like a drill into his brain. 

Briefly, he considers posting a message in the group chat about the letter, wondering if the others had received one too - but in the end he stays quiet, preferring to keep the words to himself, close to his heart, where he needs them. He knows Stan - knew Stan - and he is sure he will have written to the rest of their friends as well. They will all need their own private conversations with the ghost of the boy who was so clever, so loving, and so kind, he thinks. And so he goes on, mourning and thanking Stan Uris in silent gratitude as the weather begins to cool. 

Sometimes someone will send a message to the group, and that will kill the boredom for a little while. And sometimes Eddie texts him - short little messages that would seem snappy to anybody else, but Richie knows. Richie knows him. 

And every time Eddie messages him, his heart breaks a little bit more. 

He wants to say something to him - to call him up and demand answers, to ask him why he’d let Richie kiss him, why he’d _kissed him back, _why he’d lain in Richie’s bed with his legs parted and his hands sliding up over Richie’s shoulders, making those soft sounds like he’d never been touched before, why he’d gotten hard, why he’d asked Richie to say again that he loved him…

In the end, he stares down at Eddie’s number and does nothing. 

He keeps thinking about what Steve said, though - about how he needed to pick up a fucking sport, or get out of town, or go out and get laid, something to distract himself, pull his head out of the pit it had fallen into - and though he knows Steve had been referring to his funk, the misery and creative crisis he was experiencing following the loss of his childhood friend, he thinks that perhaps this principle could be applied to his romantic mishap too. 

What he needs to do, he tells himself, really, is go out, and have some pointless, meaningless sex, and get the fuck over Eddie. 

He knows, deep down, that it won’t work - how, he wants to ask Steve, wants to ask any therapist, wants to ask the whole fucking _world,_ how would anybody _ever _get over someone like Eddie Kaspbrak? - but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say a goddamn thing; not to anyone. 

Once again, Richie Tozier is silenced and isolated by his own pathetic cowardice. 

Only the thing is, the days are stretching on into weeks, and threatening to become months, and the reality is that Richie has been trying to get over Eddie Kaspbrak since he was sixteen years old, watching his best friend trying not to cry as he was bundled into his mother’s car and driven away to a new life in a new state, in the city, miles on painful miles from Richie. And then, at the grand old age of forty, he’d walked into that shitty Chinese restaurant in that shitty little town, and every dark-haired, dark-eyed, smart-mouthed twink he’d fucked in the intervening years had been eclipsed; blown away to dust and darkness and nothing. 

There is no getting over Eddie Kaspbrak, he knows. 

Still, he thinks to himself, he has to try - he’d texted Eddie earlier that day and asked him what he was up to, and received nothing back.And he’d wanted to fucking _sob. _

So, for the first time since what is in his mind becoming known as Derry, Take Two, he opens up Grindr, and starts searching. 

Years ago, before the advent of dating apps, he’d done what any self-hating young gay man would do when they’re new in a big city and spent several years stumbling in and out of every gay bar and club he could find, averting his gaze from the other men when the lights were too bright, feeling his way by touch, drawn to those who didn’t want to look him in the eye either, those who were happy to fuck in the bathroom, or with the lights off in either of their apartments, and didn’t want to spend too much time cuddling afterwards. 

Once his career had started to take off, he’d had to leave the scene, too terrified of being recognised, of being outed, though sometimes he thinks in retrospect that most of the men he’d hooked up with back then probably felt the same way. 

It didn’t matter, that he was in LA, that in the apartment building he lived in at that time there was a gay couple living next door and a lesbian renting across the hall and a drag queen two floors below; the terror he felt whenever he touched some other guy’s hand for too long, then made eye contact with another person across the room, or when he got a little too close to another man’s face never quite went away, and neither did the sniggering, only half-joking comments his peers made or the expressions he spotted on the faces of maybe every one in ten people when confronted with a man on the street who dressed a little too flambouyantly, or a couple of women holding hands. 

Grindr, and its predecessors - all the dodgy gay chatrooms online, vividly coloured and painful to look at for too long - were a godsend, really - he could screen their denizens, guage how likely they would be to know who he was, to try and take a covert photo or video, to spill the dirty details to the press - though, he began to quickly realise, gay and bi men weren’t particularly interested in his kind of stand-up comedy. This was a fact that he both loved and hated, and though it meant he was able to go on hooking up, having sex, making those brief emotional connections, if only in the moment of orgasm, he had never felt so lonely and disconnected. 

Still, needs must, and he still used Grindr, here and there.

And that is what he finds himself doing, one Saturday evening, sprawled out on his couch, talking to some guy named Christopher. 

Chris, like every other fucking dude Richie is attracted to, is short, dark-haired, clean-shaven, and kind of bossy. Richie asks him if he wants to meet up - meaning, at his house, or wherever Chris lived, or, hell, he’ll pay for a fucking hotel room if that will satisfy the man and take his mind off Eddie for a couple of hours. 

But Chris seems to think Richie means, like, at a bar, as though they’re going on a date. And Richie doesn’t want to do it, he _really _doesn’t want to have to put on a clean shirt and get a cab downtown or wherever to spend a couple of hours talking to someone he isn’t really interested in, not really, just on the off-chance that he might get his dick wet. 

But he closes his eyes, and sighs, thinking about what Steve had said, and about how Eddie was probably finishing up dinner with his wife now, and washing the dishes with her in their kitchen, making jokes with her that only the two of them could understand, hip-checking her, or flicking her with the towel - and he suddenly feels unbearably sick. 

He opens up his last message to Chris, and types, _Ok, sounds good. See you at eight. _Then he flops his head back onto the armrest of his sofa and groans, feeling like he is rotting from the inside out. 

The bar is already pretty full by the time he gets there, trying not to drag his feet. The music is loud and unfamiliar, and there are too many guys in vests at the bar, all tanned and toned and blonde, with stupid tattoos. Richie sighs, feeling incredibly old. 

Chris is there already, seated at the end of the bar, with a drink in front of him. He waves enthusiastically at Richie when he spots him, grinning widely, and Richie feels like a fucking asshole. 

“Hey,” he says, trying for levity, despite the sick feeling he’s experiencing in the pit of his stomach, “Chris, right?”

“Christopher, actually,” Chris says. _Christopher. _He extends a hand, weirdly formal, like they’re at a meeting for work rather than being jostled around by their fellow patrons of this trendy gay bar. 

It’s not, admittedly, the sort of place Richie would chose to hang out at, not since he was younger, still anonymous enough to risk putting his face out there when he wanted to fuck. The decor is gaudy and too bright - camp, he guesses. There’s a huge pride flag on the wall behind the bar, which is fine, he supposes, but there’s also a lot of neon colours - bright pink and green and yellow, and a disco ball, which he thinks must be ironic, and the music which is playing is definitely not something he would choose to listen to himself. 

Chris says, “Have you been here before?”

“No,” Richie says, and leans across the bar, making eye contact with the young man working there. “Not here. What are you drinking?”

He ends up ordering another of the cocktail Chris - Christopher - has chosen, and a beer for himself. And then he orders a line of shots. Chris seems kind of surprised by this, but, he says, “It could be fun.”

Richie supposes both he and Chris have very different expectations around how this thing is going to go down. 

“What do you do?” Chris asks him, bright and good-natured, and Richie feels like a real prick. 

“Oh,” he says, “I work in entertainment. I guess that’s what every guy you hook up with in this city tells you, but I actually do.”

Chris’ eyebrows shift ever so slightly up towards his hairline at the words _hook up, _but he doesn’t comment on it. 

Feeling like he ought to, Richie says, “What about you?”

“Nothing so exciting. I’m a realtor.”

“Oh,” Richie says, “cool.” It’s not cool. He thinks about making a joke about Chris’ job; baiting him into talking about it then pretending to fall asleep. And then he remembers the last time he did that, and throws back one of his shots.

By the time the sun outside has disappeared, and the bar has filled up, and the pace of the music has quickened, Richie is drunk. He still feels morose, unfortunately, which pisses him off, but in a way that makes him feel reckless. It reminds him of when he was a teenager, after his friends had started moving out of town but before he’d managed to escape. He’d been restless and irritable, prowling around the house in a funk until his mother had sent him outside, and then he’d end up sat alone at the Barrens, smoking silently, or in his car blasting his music far too loud, until his father had banged on the window and told him to knock it off. He’d felt as though there was an impenetrable sheet of glass standing between himself and the rest of the world. 

Now, he feels the same way, except that instead of folding inwards, consuming himself whole and dissolving, he wants to explode outwards; wants to do something reckless and dangerous and wild. He wants to get into his car again, but this time he wants to drive it down the highway at 100 miles per hour, point it off a cliff edge into the ocean. He thinks about how he partied when he was younger and just starting to see his own face on the television and in magazines, and how much he’d drunk and smoked and snorted. He thinks, almost fondly, of the coke, how it made him feel, how it made his entire body buzz and tremble like it could finally keep up with the speed his head was moving at. Briefly, he wonders if he could score some tonight - if he should - then he catches sight of himself in the blank black screen of his phone, laying on top of the bar next to his hand, and thinks, I’m forty. He has no business partying anymore. 

Instead, he looks over at Chris. 

“Wanna get out of here?” he says.

Chris’ apartment, surprisingly, is only a ten minute walk from the bar. It’s tastefully decorated, if not to Richie’s taste, and the lights are off when they arrive.

Richie presses him up against the hallway wall as soon as they make it through the doorway. It’s been a while since he last had sex, and he’s not an animal, but he wants it. He’s always been like this about sex - hungry - and sometimes, afterwards, when he’s putting his clothes back on and leaving in a cab, eyes down, it unnerves him a little. He knows - _knows _\- it’s all bullshit, probably, just some stupid internalised homophobia crap that causes him to perceive himself as this desperate, pushy aggressor, a predator, when the reality is he likes having sex and he’s enthusiastic about it, about making his partner feel good, and nobody has ever complained about his performance in the sack before. 

Still, now, in the dark, something feels wrong. 

There’s an uncomfortable leaden weight in the pit of his stomach, and for a moment he wonders if he’s had too much to drink and he’s going to be sick. He pauses, pulling back a little, but nothing lurches, there’s no instinct to gag, and so he pushes through the feeling, trying to ignore it, trying to focus on the sensation of someone else’s hands in his hair, thigh between his legs, neck against his mouth. 

“Bedroom,” Chris tells him, and Richie feels weirdly far away from him, from the hallway, from his own body in general, despite the heat coming off the other man’s body and the sensation of the floorboards beneath his feet, the man’s skin under his fingertips. 

He’s pulled back down the hall, further into the apartment. 

A light flicks on, and a bedroom with a neatly-made double bed and a built-in wardrobe and a television fastened to the wall comes into view. The blinds are rolled up, and through the window Richie can see other lights in other apartments, and he imagines other couples out there watching TV, eating dinner, going to bed, having sex. He looks slowly back across the room, back towards Chris and he sees another room, miles and miles away on the other side of the country, a hotel room with an uncomfortable bed and a shitty en-suite and bags and clothes strewn across the floor, lit only by the dim yellow light of a table lamp, the bloody, hateful, dangerous world outside shut out by the curtains.

Chris’ hand is on his arm, and Richie thinks he might be saying something, but the weight in his stomach is pushing him down into the earth’s core, and all of a sudden he hears himself say, “I can’t do this.”

There’s a pause. Chris must have been saying something, he thinks.

“I can’t - I’m sorry -”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Chris says, and Richie blinks slowly, turning his head. Chris looks, somehow, completely different to how he had back at the bar. Richie wonders if it was the lighting, or if he had just been so deeply inside his own head the whole time he was there he’d hallucinated half their date. “You’re not fucking straight, are you?”

Richie blinks. “No,” he says.

“This isn’t some weird fucking experiment for you?”

“No,” Richie says, “I’m definitely gay.”

Chris frowns, folding his arms across his chest. “You’re married. Or - you have a boyfriend.”

“Er,” Richie says, “sort of. Well, not really. No.”

Chris’ eyes narrow minutely. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m sorry,” Richie says. He feels dizzy. This was a terrible mistake, he thinks. “I’m really sorry. I’m a real asshole. I just...can’t.”

He takes a few steps back towards the bedroom door. 

“Hey! Are you just gonna -”

Richie says, “I’m sorry. You seem like a nice dude. I’m really sorry, it’s - I can’t. I’m in love with someone else, and -”

Chris snorts, throwing his hands into the air. “Boy, do I know how to pick them,” he says, more to himself, Richie thinks, than to Richie. 

Richie doesn’t know what to do. He’s had to do the walk of shame before; had to sneak out of hook-ups’ rooms and houses and apartments whilst they’re sleeping or showering, but he’s never had to do this. It’s humiliating and embarrassing and he feels like shit. How, he asks himself, how did he imagine this would work? He can’t move on. He can’t get over Eddie. Eddie is the beginning, and the end, and everything in between for him. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” he says to Chris. He feels sick. He hopes he’s not about to vomit all over Chris’ boring pale carpets. 

“Alright, alright,” Chris says, though from his expression Richie knows it is not alright; not at all. “I think you should go.”

“I think - yeah,” Richie says, and even though it’s what he wants, even though he can’t stand to be here, feels terrible being here with Chris when he can’t stop thinking of Eddie, he feels worse than when he came through the door. “Yeah, I should.”

Chris does not make any move to show him out; just stands at the side of his bed, arms crossed, watching Richie turn around, and stumble into a wall, before making his way back out into the hallway. He struggles momentarily with the lock on the front door, and then he is out, and down the corridor, and out onto the street, feeling raw and lonely and tired. 

He could just get an Uber home, but he decides to walk a little way instead. He can’t walk all the way back - it’s way too far - but he wants to clear his head. Maybe he’ll stop at a convenience store on the way and buy some smokes, he thinks. Maybe. He had managed to quit, after all. Bev is a terrible influence. 

Traffic whooshes past him in streaks of bright orange and yellow, and above his head the sky is blotted out by grey-blue smog. It’s not at all like in Derry, he thinks, where the night is bright above you and the stars scream light, raw and laid open to sight like an exposed nerve. He loves this city - he’s built for the city, really, always has been - the palms and the cameras and the roaring soar of the Pacific, stretched out as far as the eye can see. He loves the noise, the bright billboards, the loud, beautiful people, the fact that everywhere your eyes move there’s a new thing to land on, a new distraction, a new fantasy. It’s fun and it’s warm and it’s bright and he’s been here about twenty years, give or take, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get bored. 

It soothes him, strangely enough, the piss-poor quality air, and the sounds of the drivers passing him, helps to drown out the remnants of his shitty evening, the faint tug of longing he’d never been able to pin down since leaving Maine at seventeen but now knows the sad source of, and he’s just thinking about finding a store, buying a bottle of Jack before ordering his cab home, when his phone begins to vibrate in his jacket pocket. 

For one weird moment he’s convinced it’s Chris - but then he pulls it out and his heart stops beating for a moment. 

He swipes to answer the call, missing the first and second time because he’s suddenly lost all control of his right-hand thumb.

“Hello?” he says, like he can’t read, like he has no idea who’s on the other end of the line. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. He sounds exhausted.

Richie’s mouth is dry. “Hey,” he says back, like some kind of idiot. “Um - hey, Eds. How - how’re you?”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says, his voice quick and weirdly distant, like he’s moving around, back at home, back in New York, picking things up and putting them down, or moving down a street, or trying to read something or have two conversations at once, or, or - “I know it’s late. I’m really sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No,” Richie says, quickly, “no, no, I was - you know me. I’m a party monster, right?”

Eddie’s voice is back, apparently closer to the phone this time. “Right,” he says, sounding amused. “You’re partying.” 

“Twenty-four seven, baby,” Richie says, then wishes he hadn’t used that last word. He swallows. “Uhh...so. What’s new in the world of Eddie Spaghetti?”

Eddie says, “Don’t call me that,” at exactly the same moment Richie does, and despite the anxiety, despite the melancholy, despite the knowledge that at the end of this surprise call Eddie’s going to hang up and vanish back into his own life once again with Richie’s poor, withered heart in the palm of his perfect hand, Richie grins.

“Oh, you’re _so _funny,” Eddie says, “hilarious.”

“That’s what they pay me for,” Richie says.

“Hmm,” says Eddie, “do they? Last I heard you’d cancelled a bunch of shows.”

“You been Googling me, Eds?”

There’s a moment - a tiny, brief pause, and then Eddie says, “Yeah,” softly, and Richie is so surprised he actually stops moving for a moment. 

Eddie doesn’t say anything. 

Richie says, “Uh - huh,” because he’s stupid, and he can’t think of anything else to say. 

Eddie says, “Um...what - what are you doing? How’s your day been?”

Richie feels weird, like he’s walking down a flight of stairs in the dark, and has just missed a step, and jolted downwards heavily, jarring his bones and leaving his organs behind. 

“Um,” he says, “yeah, uh, okay. Okay. I haven’t done much. Trying to figure out what I’m gonna do next. Grovelling to my agent. I did a little writing.” There’s no point, he thinks to himself, telling Eddie about his failed almost hook-up. 

“Oh,” Eddie says, “good. That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. They pause awkwardly. “What about you?”

An intake of breath, quick and soft. Then Eddie says, “Well, I, um, I’m thinking about quitting my job.”

Richie feels his eyebrows leap towards his hairline. “Oh, damn,” he says, “Shit. That bad, huh?”

“Hmm,” Eddie says. 

“Yowza,” Richie says, and then, remembering his and Eddie’s squabbling back in the Jade of the Orient, says, “Fuck, it’s not ‘cause of what I said, is it?”

“What did you say?”

“Back in Derry. About your job being invented before fun.”

“Oh, right. And the fake snoring.” Eddie sounds decidedly unimpressed. Richie can picture the expression he’s making, over two thousand miles away; the pursed lips, like he’s tasted something sour; the line between his eyebrows. It makes him smile. It’s strange, how his friends’ faces still seem as familiar to him as they had twenty-seven years ago, when he saw them every day; it’s like nothing has changed at all. 

“Yeah,” he says, trying his best to sound apologetic. He can’t help laughing though - he’d gotten Eddie _good _with that one - and then, to his surprise, Eddie joins in. 

“You’re not funny, Richie,” he says. 

“Then why’re you giggling, Eds?”

“I don’t _giggle,” _Eddie says, affronted. 

Richie grins. “Alright. Sorry. It was a very manly laugh. _Ha ha ha._”

“The fuck was that?”

“A manly laugh. A noise that a manly man like you would make, Eds. Manly man Eddie Spaghetti Kaspbrak who only wears _plaid _and walking boots and carries an axe everywhere -”

“Are you thinking of the fucking Brawny man?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “Maybe.” He steps backwards on the sidewalk; presses his back against the brick building he’s stood beside to let a young couple pass. 

“I’m pretty sure the Brawny man didn’t carry an axe.”

“Wow - you must be even manlier than the Brawny man then, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds. And stop talking about the fucking Brawny man.” 

“You’re the one who brought it up. You’ve got Brawny on the brain, dude.”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie says, and then he sighs, long and heavy into the phone. 

Richie doesn’t know what it means. 

“Eds,” he says, “are you okay?”

There’s a long pause, and Richie strains to hear what’s going on in the background, in the backdrop to Eddie’s life. But there’s nothing; no sounds of Myra moving around their home, no roar of traffic, not even a creaking floorboard; just Eddie’s soft breathing, and the sound of it tightens Richie’s grip on his phone. 

An age passes. Then Eddie says, “No, not really.”

Richie isn’t sure what he should say. “I don’t know what to say,” he confesses. 

Eddie laughs, quietly, tiredly, Richie thinks. “You don’t have to say anything,” he says. “It’s just - nice to speak to you.”

Richie swallows. His heart hurts. He thinks about how Eddie had looked on their last night together, the lines on his face softened and his eyes big and open. 

He says, “Well, you can call me any time. I don’t exactly have the best sleeping pattern. Hey, what time is it where you are?”

Eddie breathes in suddenly, sharply down the line, and Richie’s about to ask him what’s wrong, when Eddie suddenly says, “Fuck, Rich - can I - can I tell you something?”

“What?” Richie says. “Uh - yeah, of course you - what’s -”

“I left my wife,” Eddie says, in a sudden, anxious rush, and Richie freezes where he stands. 

“What?” he says, but it’s like a dam has burst - the words are pouring from Eddie like water released. 

“I should have done it _years _ago, fuck, I should never have married her in the first place, but I was so messed up and scared and _fucked in the head_ and I don’t know why it -”

“Eds, wait, wait,” Richie says, “You left your wife? When was this?”

“The other night,” Eddie says, and his voice is rising in pitch. He sounds kind of hysterical. “Literally a couple of days ago. Fuck!”

“A couple of days ago? And you didn’t tell me? Does anyone else know? Do the others?”

“No,” Eddie says. His voice crackles down the line. “No, I haven’t - I haven’t - I keep freaking out, thinking I’m making a huge mistake...I don’t know what to do, Richie.”

Richie’s heart breaks a little. “It’s okay, Eds,” he says, stupidly, not knowing what else he can say. 

“It’s not,” Eddie tells him, miserably. “Oh my God, what am I doing -”

Richie says, quickly, “How, uh - how’d she take it? Are you okay? Where are you, man?”

Eddie says, “Oh, not well, she freaked out on me, she - I don’t wanna talk about it. She kicked me out. I keep having fucking panic attacks, honestly. What the fuck. How pathetic is that?”

“Eds,” Richie says, “ it’s okay, just breathe. Where are you?”

“Oh,” Eddie says, “I’m, I’m at a hotel. I didn’t know where else to go. I’ve been holed up here for a couple days but I’m like - I’m going fucking stir-crazy, man. I haven’t been to work. I’ve probably been fired by now. Jesus fucking Christ -”

“Are you on your own? Do you have somewhere you can stay? Someone you can stay with?”

“I don’t know. Not really. I mean, it’s okay here, but I...I don’t wanna be here anymore, in New York, I can’t stand this fucking city. And if I stay here -” He breathes in sharply again.

“Hey, hey,” Richie says, “it’s okay.”

“Sorry.” Eddie inhales once more, slowly this time. “Sorry. I’m just - I just keep thinking that if I stay here I’ll end up going back to her. I can’t do it, Rich, I can’t - don’t let me go back -”

Richie can’t understand why Eddie would ever want to go back to someone who has him as freaked out as he currently is, but now, he decides, is not the time for voicing this confusion. 

“It’s okay,” Richie says, feeling very lost. He needs to get to Eddie, he thinks - he’ll take a flight to New York if he needs to, hell, he’ll fucking drive out there and grab him and not let him go, if that’s what it takes. “It’s okay, Eds, it’s okay. Fuck. Do you have anyone you can stay with? Maybe it’s not a good idea for you to be alone - do you have friends or family you can -”

“No!” Eddie says, sharply, “no, no, the only people I can think of are Myra’s family, and I can’t go to them - I thought about Bev, but she’s staying at a friend’s place, and going through all this shit with her husband, and I can’t - and I guess Ben would make sense, he’s in upstate New York, I think, but he was talking about taking some time off and maybe going travelling with Mike, so I can’t ask him, and I don’t wanna ask Mike, he’s trying to get out of Derry, and Bill’s on set, and you’re busy, and you’re both on the other side of the country anyway -”

“Come here,” Richie tells him, before he even knows what he’s saying. “Fuck it, Eds, come here, _please, _I can’t let you stay out there when I know you’re like this -”

Eddie says, “What?”

Richie is holding onto his phone so tightly he thinks he will snap it in half. “Please,” he says, and it feels wrong, how desperately he wants Eddie back beside him again, how he feels like he’s the one breaking apart at the seams when Eddie just left his wife, and got _kicked out of his home_ just a few days ago, and seems to be experiencing some kind of panic attack-induced meltdown in some random anonymous hotel, all alone. He feels like he’s taking advantage of the situation, of _Eddie_, which is something he doesn’t want to do, can’t bear the thought of, but he also can’t handle the idea of Eddie on his own in the city he seemingly hates so much, terrified at the thought of going back to his wife, someone he was supposed to love, and was supposed to love him, and that makes Richie’s insides clench cold, because what the fuck has happened between Eddie and his wife that has shaken him so much, made him call Richie practically in tears, made him _leave _her?

Richie thinks again of the hotel room, their last day in Derry, waking up to the sound of Eddie whispering down the phone to her, the way he’d looked when he’d stepped out of the bathroom, pale and uncomfortable and upset. 

He thinks about how he’d looked her up on social media, crouched over his phone, choking on disappointment, locked in the bathroom halfway through dinner at the Jade of the Orient, and found himself staring into the face of a woman who had appeared to be Sonia Kaspbrak, two-point-oh. 

He says, “Eds, please. Come here. I have a spare room. You said you wanna be out of the city, come here. You don’t have to - you can just stay a couple days, if you want. Just while you figure everything out -”

Eddie lets out a long breath. “I don’t know,” he says, and his voice is small. “It’s a lot to...are you not busy?”

“Eds, you know I don’t have any shows coming up. It’s fine. I have space.”

“It’s a lot to ask,” Eddie says. 

“You’re my friend,” Richie says. “Fuck, if you don’t want to, that’s fine, I totally get it - it’s a long way, and, like, after what happened - with us -”

“It’s not that,” Eddie says, quickly. 

Richie blinks. “Oh,” he says. 

Eddie says, softly, “I really don’t know what to do, Rich. I never know - what’s wrong with me?”

His voice shakes. Richie desperately hopes that he’s not about to start crying.

“Please,” he says, “Eddie, please don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry, and we’re both forty-year-old men. We can’t start crying down the phone to each other. I’m out in public at the moment. There are other people about. My street cred can’t take anymore hits.”

It’s stupid, a dumb joke, but it works - Eddie starts laughing down the other end of the line, and something inside Richie gives, just a little. He rubs his hand over his jaw. His head is beginning to hurt. 

Eddie says, “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course I don’t. You’d do the same for me, right? If I left _my _wife and decided to quit comedy and got kicked to the kerb and had an anxiety attack in some shitty Holiday Inn -”

Eddie laughs, shakily. “You know I would. You don’t have a wife - don’t make a mom joke. Oh my god. What is happening? What the fuck is my life?”

Richie says, “I don’t know, but it sounds pretty fucked-up, dude.”

“I feel like I’m gonna throw up. I’m going out of my mind. If I disappear for a moment it’s because I’ve vomited all over the bed.”

“It’s okay. Just leave ‘em a big fat tip. I can’t tell you how many hotel rooms I’ve hurled in.”

“Richie!”

“Come on, Eds. Get a flight to LAX. I’ll pay. I’ll book it for you! You want me to book it for you?”

“No!” Eddie says. “I’m not some fucking - street urchin -”

“I mean, you are technically homeless.”

“Fuck you, dude,” Eddie says, but it’s okay; his breathing has evened out. He’s okay. He’s going to be alright, Richie thinks. 

“Okay. Book your flight, and text me what time it’s gonna arrive. I’ll be there. I’ll pick you up.”

“Are you sure?” Eddie says quietly. “You’d do that?”

Richie thinks, I’d do anything for you. He says, “Sure, don’t worry about it. I don’t fucking sleep, anyway.”

There’s a pause, and for a moment, Richie is convinced Eddie is going to refuse - say something about how he doesn’t want to be a charity case, or whatever. But then he sighs, softly, like a summer breeze, and says, “Okay. Thanks, Rich.”

Richie says, throat tight, “It’s okay.”

Eddie says, carefully, “You know, I - I was thinking I would head over to JFK anyway. I didn’t know where I was gonna go, but I wanted to get out of the city. You were the first person I could think of to call. I just...I’m...I’m really glad you’re letting me stay.”

His words warm something deep within Richie - settle the anxious drumming of his heart. He says, “Bet you’re glad I picked up, huh?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. His breath crackles down the line. “I am.”

*

Richie orders an Uber home as soon as he gets off the phone. Even if he manages to get on a flight the second he gets into JFK - which he won’t, Richie knows him, and he knows Eddie is going to fuck around for at least an hour online looking for the best deal, and _then _he’ll end up unpacking and repacking all the shit he’s managed to bring with him from home - he’s left his wife, _fuck _\- it will be at least another six and a half hours until he arrives in LA. 

He should sleep, he thinks - should take advantage of the window of time in which Eddie will be in transit to get some rest; fuck knows he needs it - but his brain is buzzing and his whole body is practically vibrating with nerves, with excitement, with the knowledge that in just a few hours’ time Eddie will be there with him, on the west coast, in his house, pulling faces at his decor and asking where the cleaning supplies are kept. 

He lays down regardless; tries for about half an hour to close his eyes and let sleep carry him away. But then, when he’s staring up into the black, fingers trembling against the mattress, his phone buzzes. It’s a text from Eddie. It says, _Arriving at 4.30._

He texts back, _My time?_

Eddie says, _Obviously, numbnuts._

It will take him, he knows, about thirty minutes to get from his house to LAX. Maybe twenty at that time in the morning, when there are no other vehicles about and the roads are clear. But now he has this in his phone - this concrete, hard evidence that Eddie has booked his flight and his coming to see him and is going to stay in his house, he knows there’s no point in trying to sleep. So he throws off the bedcovers and heads downstairs. 

He’s still tired, despite himself, so he makes coffee, drinking it too quickly and scalding his tongue and lips and the insides of his cheeks whilst he cleans his house for the first time in what is probably months. He pays a cleaner to come once a week and scrub things down, vacuum the carpets and dust, and do whatever else normal adults do to keep their homes clean - he doesn’t like living in filth, despite what some people might think, though he’s not actually good at cleaning himself - he doesn’t have the patience - and he can afford it, and why not, he thinks, now he’s not spending half his money on drugs and cigarettes. But Eddie has standards, and if he walks in the door and sees shit piled up on the console table, or dishes in the kitchen sink, or whatever other shit Eddie Kaspbrak hates, he might just turn around and walk out again. And he’s already lost Eddie twice - three times, really - and he thinks if it happens just once more that really might be the end of it for him. So he starts charging round like a thing possessed, throwing everything in the dishwasher, wiping down the surfaces, sweeping the hardwood floors even though they were last mopped just a few days back. 

He chugs another coffee whilst he’s doing it, and then has another when he’s done, checking the time. It’s 2am. Eddie will be on the plane right now, assuming he hasn’t had another panic attack and fled back to his wife. 

“Fuck,” he says, out loud. The word echoes in his big, empty home.

He suddenly finds himself wondering if he has oat milk, or gluten-free bread, or whatever the fuck it is Eddie eats and drinks in the kitchen. He knows he doesn’t. He thinks about ordering some on Postmates, then wonders if that’s a little presumptuous; if Eddie will arrive, take one look at the framed Austin Powers poster in his hallway and leave. 

“Stop being a fucking pussy, Tozier,” he tells himself. He stares at the clock above the oven until the time turns over to 02:01. 

He grabs his car keys, and flees from the house. 

*

Eddie takes a couple of Valiums, and ends up sleeping the entire time he’s airborne. He startles awake, feeling groggy and dirty and disoriented when the plane first hits the runway at LAX and bounces, the roar of the engines pressing in on the sides of his head like a clamp. 

After days spent alone in a hotel room, watching the walls and trying to ignore the calls and texts from Myra which had flooded his phone, it feels strange looking outside across the great sea of asphalt and seeing the faint silhouettes of swaying palm trees through the darkness, the other airplanes gliding in and out of sight between the tiny rounded windows, lifting off into the early morning sky, impossibly tearing against their own massive weight and rising up and out of his field of vision, already well on their way to destinations unknown. 

As a child, he’d liked watching planes flying overhead; liked even more seeing the trains pulling in and out of the trainyard or Derry’s single, quiet railway station, loved running alongside them down the platform until he ran out of breathe, and they finally built up enough speed to surge ahead of him like a racehorse, and grew tinier and tinier as they were tugged away by the horizon, by their far-away harbours, and he would stop, panting, and watch, thinking about all the people on board and wondering what their stories were, where they were headed, and wishing, silently, that he could go with them. It had been a little reprieve for him, on days when life at home was unbearable, when the shadow of his mother - hovering in doorways, cawing anxiously about his pills, his weak wrists, his inhaler - had grown a little too oppressive, a little too long. For a few brief moments, he had found himself projecting beyond that cruel, pinched town, seated on the trains amongst the other faceless passengers, his nose pressed to the window as Derry narrowed and shrank to nothing more than a faint dot in the distance, and the big wide world had opened up ahead. 

Of course, he _had _escaped Derry in the end, albeit with his mother, but the reality to Eddie had been that any town, any place he lived, could feel cramped and dispiriting, even New York City, when he brought along his own defective brain, saturated as it was with self-doubt and bitterness and hatred, when the same iron fists that had ruled him in Maine followed him south, and the days spent visiting hospitals and pharmacies continued like arcane rituals.

He wonders, through the fog of sleep, stretching a little where he sits as the overhead warning lights for the seatbelts go dark, if this trip to LA is going to be the same thing all over again. It doesn’t feel quite real yet, the fact that he’s here; even when he was packing his bags, buying his ticket, boarding his flight, it had all felt like a silly game, or a prank; as if the entire time he was just a few seconds away from a hand closing around his arm, a chorus of laughter, a “You didn’t _really _think you were getting away, did you?” or a crew of cameras getting up in his face like he was in an episode of _Punk’d _or something. 

There are, however, no cameras awaiting him when he disembarks; no cruel traps set on the path between the plane and security and the baggage carousels and arrivals. Eddie moves slowly through the airport, feeling like he’s fighting his way through melted toffee, like he’s drowning, like he’s in a dream -

“Hey - hey, Eds!”

He blinks, and realises he’s somehow managed to make his way from baggage claim to the arrivals lounge without even realising it. The lights are too bright, too white, and although it’s still early, very early in the morning, there are far too many people scuttling around him like spiders, hurrying past as though he’s moving too slowly, getting in their way, though Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever moved slowly in his life before; not once. 

“Eds!”

He looks up, feeling disorientated and heavy, and to his left and just in front of him, he sees Richie, looking far too tall and grinning too widely, waving his arms around like a windmill, trying to catch his attention. 

The relief he feels blast through his veins is almost unprecedented. He’d thought, back in New York, that he had missed his friends; that he had missed Richie. Somehow, even though he’s finally seeing him again, is reunited with him once more, it is only now he is fully able to comprehend just how much he had longed for the other man. The grief he had previously only barely understood slams into him like a truck. 

He thinks, for one embarrassing moment, that they might be about to run to one another, crying, arms outstretched, like they’re in a fucking movie or something - but instead, Richie just grins, taking three long, quick strides towards him, and Eddie manages to get ahold of himself, barely breaking into a jog as he goes to meet him.

“Hey,” Richie says, stopping just short of actually colliding into him. There’s hardly a foot between their bodies; Eddie can feel the warmth emanating from the other man’s chest. He looks so happy, he thinks, like he’s genuinely delighted to be up at this hour, fucking around in a airport, picking up his childhood friend who’s just had an emotional breakdown and fled all the way across the country to escape his problems. 

“Hey,” Eddie says back, feeling weirdly foolish. Still, he can’t stop smiling; Richie’s grin, as always, is handsome and infectious. 

Richie says, “You look good,” which Eddie knows isn’t true. He feels rough as shit, and he knows there’s probably a big crease etched into his cheek from where his travel pillow had been wedged between his head and the back of his uncomfortable seat. He feels vaguely unclean too, the way he always does after a long journey, and he knows he must reek of recycled air; of the lives and journeys of a hundred, two hundred, a thousand other people.

“Shut up,” he says. He peers up at Richie, feeling like he might collapse back into sleep at any moment. “Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Huh?” Richie slips his fingers beneath his glasses. “Nothing -”

“Why’re you shaking?” Eddie stares at him, alarmed. “You’re not on drugs, are you?”

Richie says, “Why do people keep asking me that?”

Eddie reaches for his hand, lifting it between them, holding it up between their faces, and there’s a moment where Richie looks past it, gazing straight at Eddie instead, and for a millisecond Eddie feels like something is about to happen - then Richie blinks, once, twice, fast, and his eyes appear to focus.

“Oh,” he says, “That. I’ve had like a billion coffees this morning.”

“What the fuck?” Eddie says. “Why did you do that? That’s so bad for you! I don’t think you should be driving us -”

“Wah, wah, wah,” Richie says, and Eddie, suddenly realising he’s still got the other man’s hand cradled in his own, releases it. Richie says, “I’m fine, Eds, don’t be a little bitch baby about it.”

“I’m not a bitch baby!”

Richie says, “Sounds like something a bitch baby would say,” and before Eddie can protest again, he reaches out, and grabs Eddie’s bag. “C’mon. I’m not parked too far away.”

They bicker peaceably as they cross the parking lot, Eddie demanding to know why the fuck Richie had drunk so much coffee, Richie putting on a stupid voice that was apparently meant to be him, mocking him, and by the time they’ve reached Richie’s car (a 2015 Corvette that Eddie silently, grudgingly admires, despite the fact that Richie’s chosen one in an obnoxious warning-yellow colour) Eddie is feeling more content than he has in a long, long time.

“What are you smiling at?” Richie asks him as they pull out onto the road, past the In-N-Out Burger, past the Ralphs. The sun hasn’t risen yet, but there’s a hint of gathering dawn in the air. It’s in the clear coolness of the wind rushing past them - Richie has the roof down - free from the weight of a day just ended, the vestiges of daytime city heat; in the bigness and emptiness of the space above them, so unfamiliar back in New York; in the faintly pink hue of the sky - or perhaps that’s just the infamous LA smog (Eddie wonders if he should purchase some kind of gauze mask to cover his nose and mouth.)

“Nothing,” Eddie says. 

He closes his eyes, tips his head back against the headrest.

They drive a little further, not speaking. 

Richie says, at last, “Hey...does your wife know you’re here? I mean, have you talked to her? What did you say, when you, y’know. How was -” He trails off, apparently not sure what else he wants to say. 

Eddie hums. He doesn’t want to think about that - not now. Not here. “I mean, no, no. And, uh, it wasn’t good. She shouted a lot. I said...she - I don’t...I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

“Okay. That’s okay. Sorry.” Richie sounds genuinely apologetic. 

“It’s alright.”

He’s tired. So tired. The hum of the car’s engine is going to lull him back to sleep, he thinks. He wants to stay awake; to see what the city looks like, to see the route back to Richie’s house, to see what kind of area he lives in, what his home looks like. But there’s plenty of time for that, he thinks.

He tips his head to the side; watches Richie drive. The soft glow of the street lamps above wash over him in fuzzy halos of light, illuminating his face, his hand on the steering wheel, his arm resting on the rolled-down window. He glances across at Eddie - Eddie sees it - and smiles, just a bit, and looks away again.

Eddie feels warm. The painful panic in his stomach has receded; just a little bit; just for a while, he thinks, but it’s a welcome reprieve.

There’s plenty of time for everything.

Richie drives on.


	4. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lets pretend this didnt take me over six months. i hurt my back and spent several months not able to sit up (i still can't really.) i won't make you wait this long again. 
> 
> big shout out to my number one girl who has kept me entertained during lockdown/back pain city and who pestered me to get this chapter done. you're so wonderful im obsessed with u lets get married. 
> 
> just a note: this chapter contains vague references to abusive relationships and drug abuse. also it includes richie having less than compassionate views on suicide (these views = not my own lol.) he'll come around, promise.

The claw descends, and blood, thick and hot and black in the low light of the cave, spurts across Richie’s chest and face and the lenses of his glasses. 

Eddie looks down at himself, at the appendage protruding from his stomach, then back up at Richie, eyes wide with disbelief. 

“Richie,” he says, and his voice sounds so small and far away, "Rich -"

Richie jerks upright, hot and sticky with sweat, panting like a man pursued. He raises a hand to his face, rubs it, squeezing over his eyelids. His face is wet. The taste of salt bites at the sides of his tongue. 

The light outside is bright and warm, pouring like liquid gold through the curtains he’d forgotten to close the night before. He’s in his bedroom, he knows, in his house, in LA. He’s not back in Derry; not in the damp dark beneath the Well House, waiting for something evil beyond all comprehension to find him, taunt him, bite and rip and maim and stab. He’s okay. 

He reaches for his glasses. 

Eddie’s alive, too, he tells himself, though, frighteningly, that thought feels less real. Eddie is safe. Eddie had called him the previous night, then flown in to California, and Richie had collected him from the airport and driven him home through the empty streets of the city, through the rising dawn, past palm trees and billboards and mansions, glancing sideways every few seconds to watch the warm glow of the street lights roll in and out like waves across Eddie’s face. He’d fallen asleep on the short drive back to Sherman Oaks, and only woken up when Richie had physically poked him after pulling up the driveway and putting the car into park. He'd been groggy too when Richie had led him inside, anxiously watching from the corner of one eye for his responses to things, but Eddie hadn't reacted at all. He'd moved slowly, sluggishly, like his clothes were weighed down and waterlogged, and after Richie had closed and locked the front door, he'd asked where he could sleep. 

He wonders, now, if in fact _Eddie _was the one who'd taken something - he'd seen all the pill bottles lined up in Eddie's bathroom back at the Derry Townhouse - and he's been in the entertainment industry long enough to recognise the signs. Perhaps he'll say something when Eddie wakes up, he thinks, though he doesn't want Eddie to think he's prying, or trying to lecture him on health and wellbeing; that idea is frankly laughable. Besides, _he'd _spent much of the late nineties and early noughties with a variety of different substances blocking up his nostrils, so really, he has no room to talk. He turns onto his side, fumbling around on the nightstand for his glasses. Eddie's probably fine, he thinks.

Still, the house is quiet, silent, and it's hard to believe that just down the hallway Eddie Kaspbrak is curled up on Richie's guest bed, alive and present, close enough that if Richie were to shout his name, Eddie might yell back, berating him for having woken him up so early.

Almost impossible to believe, in fact.

Richie lies very still, listens very carefully. He's not used to having people stay over; he's not sure if at this distance he should be able to hear Eddie breathing in his sleep. His dad had slept over a few times after his mom had died and Richie had dragged him out to LA, before he'd started forgetting shit and had to be moved into the home about a half hour's drive away, but he snored, loudly, and so Richie had always known he was there.

Besides, his dad hadn’t exactly returned from the brink of death in the way Eddie had.

He swallows, and forces himself to get up.

Out in the hallway he pauses; lingers outside the spare room. The door is cracked open, just a little. Eddie had been so tired and sluggish the previous night that when Richie had shown him to his room he'd just mumbled "Thanks," and immediately started stripping his clothes off. Richie had dropped Eddie's bag on the floor and beat a hasty retreat. Clearly after that Eddie had collapsed into bed, not bothering to pull the door closed against the other man, or open it wider to keep the air in the room cool.

It makes him feel like a real creep, but he pauses by the doorway anyway. He can't hear anything; not the long, deep telltale breaths of sleep; not a body shifting beneath the blankets; not a thing. 

His heart rises in his throat. 

Perhaps Eddie _didn’t _call him the previous night; didn’t come home with him that morning. Perhaps he’s still in New York; still in his own apartment, still with his wife. Or perhaps - worst of all - he’s not in California, and he’s not in New York, but back in Maine, back beneath the earth, beneath the sewers, beneath Neibolt Street, slowly, quietly decomposing in the dark. 

Perhaps none of this is real; none of anything is real. 

It suddenly seems impossible that Eddie is in his house with him; that Eddie has left his wife; that Eddie is even _alive, _instead of bleeding out in the clown’s lair. Impossible, impossible, impossible.

It had been so much easier, he thinks, to believe in impossible things when he was young, even when those things were horrible and terrifying. He can't imagine them defeating Pennywise now without having encountered It first as children.

The carpet shudders beneath him, and Richie reaches out a hand to the wall; steadies himself. There’s bile in the back of his throat, and he feels dizzy. 

_Stop it, _he tells himself, gritting his teeth, curling his fingers until his hand forms a tight fist; _stop it. This is real. It’s real and if I open the door Eddie will be there, Eddie will be there because he called me last night and flew into LA and I picked him up and gave him a ride here, and -_

He reaches out blindly, heart pounding, and pushes the door to the spare bedroom all the way open. 

There’s nobody there. 

His throat constricts; spasms painfully. 

There’s nobody there. The bed is empty; made up, the duvet laying flat and undisturbed, and the room is entirely still and silent and vacant. 

The sound of his own breathing is loud in the hallway. 

He slams the door shut. 

He doesn’t know how he makes it downstairs - he’s half-blind, his vision clouded with static, and he’s certain he’s about to faint, or throw up - but somehow he manages it, slipping over the smooth edges of each step so his heart falls into his stomach with a violent judder at every little move he makes.

At the foot of the stairs he turns right; struggles sightlessly into the back of the house where the kitchen and dining area and living room all run together. Back when he’d bought the place, he’d liked all that empty space, the wide, open expanse of it all, with no walls to obscure his vision or fence him in. Now, he feels like he’s lost at sea; stranded, boatless and alone above the Mariana Trench, and beginning to lose the energy required to keep himself afloat.

“Oh, hey.” Eddie is there, in his kitchen, wearing black sweatpants and a red t-shirt, his dark hair falling across his forehead in the shallow waves Mrs Kaspbrak had for years attempted to wrestle into submission with thick, waxy hair gel and which Richie had, until now, forgotten all about. Eddie is there. Eddie is in Richie’s kitchen, safe and alive. He looks like a dream. His sudden appearance feels like a dream. “Sorry, I hope you don’t mind - I couldn’t sleep -”

“What? It’s okay. ‘Course I don’t mind.” Richie can’t stop staring. He is suddenly very aware of the fact he’s only wearing a t-shirt and boxers. 

Eddie looks at him carefully. Richie feels exposed, all of a sudden, like he’s stood on a stage beneath a hot white spotlight and he's forgotten all his lines.

Eddie says, “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah. I’m fine. Just - it’s kind of weird. I glanced in your room and saw you weren’t there, and I was kind of like - oh, it was a dream, y’know. Like - you being here.” There’s no way, he thinks, he’s going to tell Eddie about his brief spiralling freak-out.

They stare at each other over the island for a long moment. Richie wants to reach out and touch him; make sure he’s really here, that he’s not a mirage. He clenches his fists tightly, trying to forget what Eddie’s skin had felt like beneath his fingertips that final night in Derry.

“Sorry,” Eddie says again. Richie wishes he’d stop saying it. “I know it’s probably weird for you. Do you - do you want toast? I’m making toast - sorry, I was hungry, I found bread in the cupboard -”

Richie says, “Dude, it’s fine, you don’t need to apologise.”

Eddie opens his mouth, probably to say sorry again, then closes it. 

They look at one another a little longer, listening to the refrigerator hum, before at last Eddie says, “Uh, what about coffee?”

Richie slowly makes his way to one of the stools stood at the opposite side of the counter to Eddie; lowers himself onto it tentatively. “It’s okay,” he says. “I had so much last night I should probably give it a break today.” He tries for a smile, and Eddie seems to relax a little. 

He still seems oddly tense, though, watchful, almost poised, as though he expects Richie to leap from his seat and knock him to the floor at any given second, glancing over his shoulder at him every few seconds. 

Richie hates it. Hates the idea that that’s how Eddie sees him; as some slavering beast, barely capable of controlling himself. He’d told him he was _in love_ with him; held him down on that uncomfortable old bed in that shitty little hotel back in their shitty little hometown. Stupid, he thinks, _stupid. _From now on he’ll do better; he won’t let his feelings for the other man get the better of him. Eddie has come to him for help; not to have some new pursuer pawing all over him.

Eddie pours him a glass of water. Richie accepts it gratefully. He hopes the other man doesn’t notice the way the surface of the liquid is trembling. 

Eddie says, looking at his own hands more than he looks at Richie, “I know it’s gotta be...odd, having me here. I mean, usually you have your own space, and like, here I am, fresh off the back of an emotional breakdown and fucking rising from the dead, in your kitchen, using your shit. And like - I know we’re friends and I’m so grateful to you for last night, Rich, I can’t - I can’t thank you enough, but it’s been, what, almost twenty-five years since we last spoke? It’s weird, I get it. I’ll get a hotel room, I honestly don’t mind, it’s fine -”

“No,” Richie says, far too quickly.

Eddie blinks, slowly. His eyes are big and round and beautiful. “No?”

“No. It’s - it’s okay.” The silence between them stretches out, thin and fragile as smoke. “I like,” Richie says, and immediately he’s kicking himself; this is too much, he’s making himself too vulnerable, he’s going to fucking freak Eddie out, scare him away - “I like having you here.”

To his surprise, Eddie doesn’t blanch, or tense up, or insist that _no, _he _will _get a hotel room, and he _will _be leaving now, and in fact he _will_ be flying back to New York, back to his wife, out of Richie’s life - but instead, he gives Richie this funny little smile, head tilted to the side, and says, “You won’t once I’ve started tearing the place up. Disinfecting all your shit.”

Richie says, “I have a cleaner over once a week, Eds. I cleaned the place last night, just for you! It’s not that bad, is it?”

Eddie shrugs, looking a little awkward. “No, but - you know what I’m like.” He puts a thumb in his mouth and chews it absently while he watches the toaster. His fingernails are bitten right down to the quick. Richie hadn’t noticed in Derry. Not enough time, he supposes; too many clowns. Now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop noticing things about Eddie; doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of it. He presses his lips together. 

The toast pops, and, as if cued by the sound, Richie’s phone starts ringing from somewhere in the hallway. He hadn’t even realised that he’d left it there last night.

Eddie delicately plucks the toast out, seemingly trying not to burn himself on the crust or the hot metal. “Oh - yeah,” he says, distractedly. “It’s been ringing for a while. I didn’t answer it or check it; I thought it might be your manager, or one of your friends or something. Sorry - should I have woken you up?”

“It’s cool,” Richie says. He gets up; follows the noise towards the front door, when he finds his phone stuffed in the pocket of the jacket he’d worn the previous night. The phone stops ringing the second he picks it up. He stands in the hallway, squinting down at the screen. 

15 missed calls. 41 texts. 

Most of them are from Mike. The others are from Bill and Bev and Ben. 

For the second time that morning, Richie feels like the bottom of his stomach has dissolved. 

He scrolls to his call list; taps Mike’s name. 

Mike picks up within seconds. “Rich,” he says, as soon as he picks up the phone, “where the hell have you been?”

Richie says, “What the fuck, dude, I’m at home, I was asleep. Why -”

Mike interrupts him. “Do you know where Eddie is?” He sounds frantic.

Oh. That makes sense. They’re worried about Eddie. The tension eases a little. He heads back into the kitchen, rubbing the back of his head. 

“Yeah, man,” he says, turning to look at Eddie, who’s staring up at him from his seat at the table, eyebrows raised. “He’s, uh...he’s right here.” He’s not sure if Eddie minds him telling Mike this - he guesses if he doesn’t say anything about the reason for Eddie being in California, that’s okay. Eddie can let the others know about him telling his wife he wants out in his own time.

Mike sounds surprised. “He is?”

“Uh - yeah.”

“At your house? Are you still in LA?”

Richie, feeling lost, says, “Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What -”

“Listen, can you put me on loudspeaker? I need to speak to both of you. I called the others earlier and told them together, but we couldn’t get ahold of you, and I needed to let them know, I’m sorry we didn’t wait -”

“Mike,” Richie says, moving back to the table, and sitting down, “calm down, dude. What the fuck is going on?”

Eddie sits up a little straighter at that. _What is it? _he mouths. 

Richie puts his phone on loudspeaker; lays it down on the tabletop between them. 

Mike is still rambling away about something Richie can’t quite grasp on the other end of the line. 

“Mike,” Richie says, “I can’t tell what you’re saying, man. Are you okay?”

Eddie says, “Mike, it’s me. What’s happened?”

They don’t say anything to each other - don’t even look at one another - but Richie _knows_ they’re both thinking the same thing. It’s back. The clown isn’t dead. They’ve failed. The fear isn’t even the same sharp shock it was back when he'd first received Mike’s call; when they’d sat together at the Jade of the Orient and remembered; even the very first time they’d seen It together, clearly, and knew they weren’t going mad, back in that old rotting house on Neibolt Street. It’s just a slow, cold drip of dread, the realisation that things aren’t okay, that they never were okay, and probably never would be okay - how could they be?

Mike says, “Are you sitting down?”

“Mike!” Eddie says, and his voice is high and sharp. His hands are clenched into fists in front of him, and Richie desperately wants to reach out and take both of them in his own palms; comfort and reassure him, or at least try to - “Mike, what the fuck - It - It isn’t -”

“Oh!” Mike says, and he breathes out hard and fast. “Not - it’s not what you think it is. Guys, I promise It’s not -”

Richie says, “Mike, I swear to God -”

“Stan’s alive,” Mike says quickly, and the rest of the sentence chokes and perishes in the back of Richie’s throat. “He’s _alive, _guys.”

Beside him, Eddie goes very still. Richie feels suddenly short of breath. Neither of them say anything. 

“Guys?” Mike says.

Eddie licks his lips. “Are you,” he says. His voice is breathy, like his throat is dry, like it hurts to speak too loudly, “are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Richie curls his fingers; grips hard on the edge of the wooden table. The room feels like it should be spinning around him; but everything is very still. It is an incredibly odd sensation. “How -” he says. He wants to say, “How is he alive?” or “How do you know?” or “How has it taken this long?” or “How can he be alive even when he didn’t show up in Derry, when he’s been dead for weeks, when I got the letter from him that’s been burning a hole in my desk drawer?”

But he can’t. He can’t decide what he wants to say, and even if he could, he doubts he would be capable of getting the words out. Once again he feels stranded, unmoored inside his own body; shipwrecked somewhere behind his eye sockets. 

On the other end of the phone line, miles and miles away, maybe still in Derry, maybe elsewhere - Richie can’t remember - Mike says, “He called me this morning. Wanted me to let everybody know. The day we killed It - the day Eddie came back - he woke up in the morgue -”

“Wait,” Richie says, “what? He’s been alive all this time?”

“He’s been on a psychiatric hold,” Mike says, and Eddie, fingers pressed to his mouth, whispers, _oh my God, _like _that’s _the most shocking thing he’s ever heard. “He’s been in hospital.”

Richie’s head is spinning. “His wife - his wife said he was dead,” he says, and he feels strangely far away from his body, like a ventriloquist, like he’s just thrown his voice clear across the kitchen and through the French windows and out into the garden. “Bev spoke to her, that night - she said he’d killed himself -”

“He’s alive, Rich,” Mike says, emphatically, and Richie can’t think of a single thing to say.

“Oh my God,” Eddie whispers again, next to him. “Oh, my God.”

“You can talk to him,” Mike is saying, enthusiastically, and Richie still feels miles and miles from his body. “I spoke to him this morning - well, morning out here - then I woke Bill up to tell him, and I called Ben and Bev too, we got on a group call. I couldn’t get hold of either of you guys, I’m sorry - we would have waited but we were so -”

“It’s fine,” Eddie is saying, though Richie thinks he’s shaking a little - or is it _him _who is shaking? “Mike, it’s fine, it’s fine, we get it -”

“Let me give you his number - he wants to talk to you guys -”

“Yes, yes, yes, let me get a pencil -”

Richie blinks, and Eddie swims into view, still leaning over the dining table, looking up at him with a strange expression that he isn’t quite able to place. 

“Rich,” he says, softly, “a pencil?”

“Oh,” Richie says. Obediently, he goes and retrieves one, and an old takeout menu for Eddie to write on. His hands shake as he carries the items back. 

“Thanks,” Eddie says, and writes down the number Mike dictates to him down the line. His writing is wobbly - his hands are trembling too. “Can we call him now?”

“Yeah!” Mike says. His enthusiasm echoes in Richie’s skull. He feels like he’s going to be sick. What the fuck, he thinks, is wrong with him? “He said you can call him whenever. God, guys, I can’t believe -”

Richie can’t believe either. He wonders when things will start to feel real again. He wants to sit down and close his eyes; but he’s terrified that if he does he’ll wake up in bed again, alone in an empty house, or back in Derry, covered in Eddie’s blood and his own tears. 

He doesn’t realise that Mike and Eddie have said their goodbyes until Eddie nudges him.

“Hey,” Eddie says. 

“Oh,” Richie says. His throat is tight. “Bye - bye Mike. Thanks. I - thanks.”

Mike says, “Call me later,” and Eddie hangs up. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. 

Richie blinks. He doesn’t know if he’s okay. Of course he’s okay. He’s fine. This is fine. He says, “Are you gonna call him, then?”

Eddie gives him a strange, wary sort of look, but Richie ignores it. 

“Should I call him now?” he says. 

Richie wants to say yes; wants to scream no. He feels, oddly, like he’s about to do something deeply terrifying; like he’s queueing up for a rollercoaster he doesn’t really want to board but cannot turn away from in front of his friends. He’s desperately frightened and desperately desperate, and he can’t understand why. Even getting ready to head into the sewers, he never felt like this. It feels like his grasp on reality is slipping - or, he thinks, quite suddenly, even worse - like it’s already slipped and he is coming painfully, treacherously close to discovering just how far. He thinks that if they call Stan, his poor, anguished wife will pick up the phone once more and confirm that this is all a Deadlights dream; that he will turn back to Eddie, horrified, and find him gone, forever this time. The image of Eddie, skewered, streaked in his own blood, suspended in mid-air in Richie’s kitchen, dripping onto the hardwood floors suddenly assaults his mind, and he can hardly breathe. 

“Rich?” Eddie is saying, he realises with a shock. “Richie?”

“What?” he says. He can hardly breathe. He feels like he’s drowning; like he’s inhaling water through his nose. 

Eddie says, “Shall I call him now?” again, and Richie realises he has to say yes. He’s fine. He has to say it. Of course he does; of course he wants to speak to Stan again.

“Yeah,” Richie says. His own voice echoes around distantly inside his skull. 

Eddie gives him that same old Eddie Kaspbrak wide-eyed deer-in-headlights stare, like he’s keeping his eyes as open as he can to drink in any extra details; like he’s anticipating danger, and - not for the first time, Richie realises - he finds himself wondering, anxiously, if Eddie is afraid of _him. _

“You sure?” Eddie says, carefully. The way his gaze scans across Richie’s face puts him on edge, though he isn’t quite sure why. 

"Yeah," he says, wondering why his own voice is echoing inside his head. "Yeah, of course."

Eddie looks at him a moment longer - Richie tries and fails to hold that gaze - then nods, whispers, "Okay," perhaps to himself, and pulls Richie's phone towards himself across the tabletop.

They end up Facetiming Stan. Richie doesn’t know if being able to see him is better or worse than just hearing a disembodied voice at the end of a crackly line. 

Stan, improbably, still has the same face as he did the last time Richie saw him - straight-lipped and serious, staring out of the back of Rabbi Uris’ station wagon with that penetrating, haunted gaze - same soft cheekbones, same straight nose, same warm brown eyes. The only things that are different now are his hair - which is still curly, just slightly darker - and the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. Weirdly, Richie thinks this might be easier if he looked like a stranger.

“Stan!” Eddie says, his voice genuinely delighted in a way Richie doesn’t think he’s heard it since boyhood.

Stan waves in the same gentle, world-weary way he’d done things as a teen. Richie doesn’t miss the tip of what looks like a thick, bumpy scar peeking out of the wrist of his shirt. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. 

“Hey, guys,” Stan says. “How’s it going?”

Eddie says, “Pretty weird,” and despite the strange sensation that he is being sucked down a drain that has almost overwhelmed Richie up to this point, he laughs. 

Stan laughs too. “You look exactly the same, Eddie,” he says, and then he turns his attention to Richie. “Bev was right when she said you were gonna grow into your face,” he tells him, the right-side corner of his mouth twitching upwards.

“You callin’ me ugly?” Richie says automatically, in his weather-beaten ol’ gunslinger voice, and Stan and Eddie both laugh again, but Richie suddenly finds himself wondering: _do _they think I’m ugly? In truth, he hasn’t given much thought to his looks in years; not since his teens. He looks down at the shiny surface of the marble countertop, and tries to pick out his own reflection in it. It’s there, faint, but distorted - dashed through with the stone pattern, pockmarked by the bright spotlights above. He’s still in his ratty old Snoopy t-shirt, he realises, and all of a sudden, feels weirdly uncomfortable about it. He looks at his fingers, spread out across the cool black surface. They seem strangely far away.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Eddie says, somewhere just south of Richie’s left ear. “Where are you? Are you at home?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, “the study. I got back from hospital maybe a month or so ago.”

There’s a tight, still pause - because they all know the type of hospital Stan is referring to. Richie swallows. A month, he thinks - more than a month. Stan got out of hospital over a month ago and he’s just now decided to let them know that he’s actually fucking _alive_. He exhales, hard. 

Eddie, no doubt eager to move past the discomfort but more eager, of course, because that’s _Eddie, _to soothe the wound that has just been prodded, says quickly, “That’s good, Stan. How are - are you doing, um, better?”

Stan shrugs. His smile is the same wry, tight twist it was as a child.

“Sorry,” Eddie says quickly, and Richie thinks, with a viciousness that somewhat surprises himself, Eddie shouldn’t have to apologise for something Stan did to himself rather than keep a promise he made to his friends.

“It’s okay,” Stan says, “I’m fine,” and then he says, “So, are you both living in LA now?”

Eddie, apparently relieved by the change of subject, says, “Richie does. I’m - I’m just visiting.”

“Cool,” Stan says, “that’s cool,” though Richie thinks he sees the question in the other man’s eyes. He wonders if Stan has looked him up and down already, sized him up from behind the new wire-rimmed spectacles, and figured out what’s really going on. He remembers, suddenly, reading _The Great Gatsby _in high school, and feeling thoroughly freaked out by the descriptions of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg staring sightlessly out into the desert, though he’d never quite worked out why. He’d liked the book regardless - liked Gatsby and his romanticism and the descriptions of his wild loud parties, the way he’d watched that faint green light for so long. 

“Mike says you two talked earlier,” Eddie says. “Did you speak to the others?”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “Called him this morning. Then I spoke to him again later - he got Bill and Ben and Bev dialled into a group call.” He seems to hesitate for a moment. “It was - good. It was good to talk.”

Richie imagines them talking - Stan and the others - whilst he and Eddie slept; whilst he downed coffee after coffee in the LAX arrivals lounge; whilst Eddie bit his nails down to stubs and cried alone in a hotel room. He can imagine them laughing, catching up, joking. 

Eddie says, “That’s good,” because of course he does. Eddie hadn’t seen what happened at the lake. Eddie hadn’t seen Ben and Bev hanging all over each other; hadn’t heard Bill and Mike cracking jokes. They’d made jokes about _Eddie,_ he thinks.

It feels like there’s something in his throat; like there’s a creature in there, pulsing and ugly, just waiting to be vomited out. He realises he’s shaking, quite suddenly - neither Eddie nor Stan seem to have noticed - and then his mouth is once again moving in a way that is far beyond his control, and he finds, too late, that he is asking, “Why didn’t you come back to Derry?”

Eddie and Stan both fall silent. 

He thinks that Eddie has turned his head to look at him, but he can hardly see a thing; the shape of Stan on the phone screen is suddenly far, far away. A swirling mist is descending. All he can focus on is the way his fingernails are nipping into his palms; the way his breath is rattling in his lungs like gnarled old tree branches in a storm. 

“Sorry?” Stan says.

“You heard me,” Richie snaps, and Eddie, softly, says, “Rich,” but Richie barely notices. He’s angry now - so angry, all of a sudden, at Stan, but not just at Stan - at the others too, Mike and Bill and Bev and Ben, and at Derry, all the people who lived there, and the adults who’d not done a damn thing to help when Bowers and his stupid cronies were beating on them, who’d turned a blind eye to Bev’s father, to Eddie’s mother; his own parents, even: his mom, whom he’d loved, and who had loved him but had wanted a girl, and had told him so, just once, though the memory of it had never left him; his dad, who doesn’t remember things, not even because of the clown, because of something as weak and faliable as human neurology, who has no _fucking _idea of the things Richie’s been through; at the people who don’t care, who only care about themselves, who are so goddamn fucking selfish, and he feels once again like he isn’t really there, like he’s leaving his body - but that’s not it, he knows, it’s the rage, the anger, the fear, the frustration, all of it, bubbling up and bubbling over like a boiling pot, hissing and spitting, and he’s still trembling as he says, “You didn’t give a fuck, not about any of us. You only cared about yourself. You left us to as good as die, Stan, at the hands of that fucking clown - and you let us think you were fucking _dead_, your wife told us you were dead, you didn’t care - you didn’t fucking care -”

Stan is silent. 

Eddie, again, says, _“Richie,” _insistently, but Richie’s _done _\- he can’t stop now, can’t close his mouth and pull the words back, and, more than anything, he needs to make Stan understand, make him recognise the terror and the anguish and the pain he’d been through, that Eddie had been through, the way they’d suffered without him, whilst Stan hadn’t cared enough to even _try _to come back, as though _Stan _was the only one who’d ever been afraid, who’d ever been sad or lonely or hurt -

“What, you’re gonna call us up, ask us how it’s going? Say, oh, thanks man, thanks for killing that fucking clown, guys, I didn’t come back even though I promised, I made a _promise _that I would, that I _broke,_ I didn’t come back even though It could have killed you, It nearly killed _Eddie,_ isn’t that great, now let’s all be friends again, feel sorry for me because I was so sad I hurt myself, I had to do it because I was too much of a pussy to stand up for my friends when it mattered most -”

“Rich, stop!” Eddie says, and he puts his hand on Richie’s arm, but the words are pouring from Richie’s mouth like a waterfall now, and he doesn’t think he could stop even if he wanted to. 

“Fuck you, man. You think you were the only one who was scared? Fuck you! Bev’s dad touched her and her husband hit her and she came back. Eddie’s mom pulled a fucking Gypsy Rose Blanchard on him and he came back. Bill’s brother was fucking _murdered _and he came back, Ben came back, I came back, Mike _never left. _What’s your fucking excuse?”

Stan says, “Richie.” He sounds tired. 

Richie ignores him. “That fucking clown nearly killed Eddie! We thought he was dead! We had to - I left him down there to die in the fucking sewers - did you know that? We got out but we had to leave him behind and the others were fucking - they were laughing, they were happy, they were making fucking _jokes _even though we thought Eddie was _dead! _That fucking thing stabbed him right in front of me, he got _skewered, _he almost _died_ and I wanted to stay with him but the others were acting like it didn’t matter, like the only thing that mattered was the fucking clown, and you didn’t even give a shit about that! Well, fuck you, man, fuck you.”

He gets up, knocking over the stool he’d been perched on, and storms out of the kitchen and down the hallway. His jaw is clenched so tightly it’s starting to give him a headache. He wants a smoke. 

There are no old packets in any of the drawers in his hallway; none in the pockets of the jackets and coats he has hanging up by the front door. It takes a good ten minutes, but finally, he manages to find one solitary, slightly crushed cigarette beneath the driver’s seat of his car, and an almost empty lighter which is used more for joints than for anything else these days in the door. 

He sits down on the porch, lights up, and smokes moodily. A family with a dog passes by his gate; a woman on a bike. 

He feels exhausted; wrung out, like he’s just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. He’s not quite sure where all that anger came from; why it had rumbled to the surface and erupted so quickly, so violently. For the past few weeks, ever since Derry, he’s felt like he’s not really in his body, like he’s watching himself move jerkily through life like an automaton, like he’s possessed by something that doesn’t quite know how to act human. It would, he thinks, be unnerving, if he didn’t feel so distanced from everything all the time, including his own thoughts, his own emotions.

He sucks on the cigarette slowly, watching the smoke curl and rise and dissipate into the warm autumn air above him. 

He’d hardly thought about it - hadn’t _allowed _himself to think about it - how he felt about the others making him leave Eddie behind, not up until now. He closes his eyes, passing a hand across his face. He remembers the way they’d splashed one another, laughed, made jokes about Eddie hating being in the quarry water like it was weeks, _months _since he’d passed, like he wasn’t still clinging to life, alone in the darkness below that hated little town.

Clinging to life, or maybe even - 

Richie swallows down the bile that surges to the back of his throat. He cannot even begin to contemplate finishing that thought. 

They were just relieved, he knows, the others, logically - they were exhausted and tired and in shock that they’d done it, they’d killed the clown, it was over, It wasn’t going to hurt any more kids ever again…

He is still angry.

He is still angry, but it’s a hollow sort of anger, the anger of aftermath, something like when you’ve cried and cried and cried for hours on end and find yourself all wrung out like an old sponge, with nothing more to give. He feels like he did back in the old days, like he’s been partying for hours, for days, and he hasn’t eaten or slept in twice as long. It’s an exhausted anger, a hopeless anger, and it weighs down his body as heavy as a lead anchor.

He can’t even begin to think about Stan. He feels wretched. 

He wonders, suddenly, if this is how Bill felt when Eddie had reappeared that night in the Derry Townhouse; like everything he thought he knew had once more been upended. The idea that Stan was alive the whole time and just never bothered to let them know - not until now - is repulsive. Then again, he thinks, the alternative option - that Stan really _was _dead and he has, somehow, been brought back, reanimated, had his veins closed and heart restarted, brain zapped into consciousness once more - is even more horrendous. He thinks of Eddie, alone in the dark, bleeding out. He thinks about how still his body had been. He shudders, and pushes the thought from his mind once more. 

He’s just finishing his cigarette when the front door opens behind him, and he hears the sounds of Eddie’s feet on the porch. 

His shoes come into view - the loafers he’d worn on his flight the previous night - and it’s oddly endearing, Richie thinks, like most things associated with Eddie; the fact he’s put shoes on to take a couple of steps outside when Richie’s not even wearing socks. 

He pauses for a minute at Richie’s side - Richie remains silent - then, with a soft sigh, sits down beside him. 

He says, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke, Rich.”

Despite his mood, Richie finds his lips twitching. He says, “Twice as likely to have a heart attack, right?”

Eddie, sounding a little surprised, says, “Y-yes. That’s right.”

Richie stubs his cigarette out. He says, “Sorry. I don’t usually...dad and I actually quit, after mom died. She smoked right up until she kicked the bucket, the dumbass.”

Eddie says, “Oh - I’m sorry, I didn’t - I didn’t know -”

“It’s okay. How would you have known?” He runs his hands over his legs, just to do something with them. “It was like ten years ago, anyway.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Still. I’m sorry.” A pause. “I always liked Maggie. She was always really kind to me.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah.” He doesn’t look at Eddie. Eddie stays where he is, though, close to Richie’s side. “Fuck,” he says, eventually, and he pushes his glasses out of the way to rub his eyes, “fuck, Eds, I’m sorry.”

Eddie says, quietly, “I don’t think it’s me you need to apologise to.”

“Fuck. Yeah. I know.” Richie sighs heavily, rests his chin in his palm. “Was he - was he okay? After?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “he gets it.”

Richie groans. “Shit,” he says, and rubs at his eyes again. He feels fucking terrible. “That kind of makes it worse.”

“I know,” Eddie says, softly, and Richie looks at him cautiously. He’s watching Richie too, he realises, arms wrapped loosely around the fronts of his own legs. The position makes him look somehow softer, younger even, and Richie is hit with yet another wave of longing, of sadness, of grief for what they’ve lost, for what they almost lost, for the fact that he’d left him down there beneath Neibolt Street, alone in the dark to his fate. His stomach hurts.

“I didn’t mean it,” he says, but even to his own ears the words sound like a lie. “I - I don’t...I don’t know why I said it. I was so mad. I don’t -” His voice cracks, and he struggles to gather himself. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, but he shifts his weight, just a little, just enough so that his shoulder is barely touching Richie’s.

Richie says, “Are you sure he was okay? Was he mad? Was he upset?”

“No,” Eddie says. Richie feels his voice through the point at which their bodies are touching. “He’s okay.”

They sit quietly a moment longer. 

“Did you carry on talking?” Richie says, “After, you know. I left.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “a little.” He begins to pick pills off the right leg of his sweatpants. “He’s an accountant now. He lives in Atlanta. His wife’s called Patty. Patricia.”

“Did you speak to her?”

Eddie says, “No. I’d like to, though. She sounds nice.” He hesitates, drawing in a slow breath. He sounds almost frightened when he says, “Stan says - he said it’s been hard for her. What with, you know. Him dying. Then - not.”

Richie says, “I fucking bet.” He thinks he knows how the poor woman feels. If that even is what happened to Stan. If he’s not lying. He scratches the stubble on his cheek. 

Eddie says, suddenly, quickly, “You’re not mad, are you, Richie?”

Richie turns to look at him, surprised. 

“I mean - I know you are - are you -”

Richie remembers, again, the Well House. How It had transformed into the Stan-spider hybrid; attacked him. How Bill had gotten all up in Eddie’s face; screamed at him. The rambled apologies, the tears.

“I’m not,” he says, and he aches so badly to reach out; put an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. “Eds, I’m not mad at you.”

Eddie says, “I know,” but he still sounds unhappy; still sounds shaken. 

“I’m not mad at Stan either. Not really.” He hesitates. “Well, maybe a little bit. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m mad at. I’m just - I don’t know. It’s a lot. Everything.” He kicks the butt of his cigarette away, towards the car. It hurts, doing it without shoes. 

Eddie sighs. 

“It fucked up our whole lives, really, didn’t it?” Richie says. He looks skywards; imagines his life as a long line of dominoes; the clown’s ugly face etched onto the very first one. Maybe things would have been different, he thinks, if they had all just _remembered. _

“Yeah,” Eddie says, unhappily. 

Neither of them say anything; not for a long moment. 

At last, Richie says, again, “I am sorry, Eds.”

Eddie says, “It’s okay.”

“I’m glad you got to talk to Stan.”

“Me too.” Eddie nudges him; the brief moment of contact settles something in Richie, weirdly, and he feels himself relax, even if only a tiny bit. “Hey. We could call him back another day, you know. I - I want to talk to him again. And he said he wants to talk to you too.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He wants to talk to Stan too, he thinks. He does. He and Stan used to be such good friends. They were a little like him and Eddie, he remembers, the way they’d jabbed and playfully argued with one another - at least without the life-altering crush. Stan had been a pretty good sport, usually, about Richie’s dumb, childish jibes, either rolling his eyes and ignoring his antics, or coming back with some smart remark that was so cutting and caustic it had almost shut him up. He misses that - misses everything, really, about the way things used to be. He’s a goddamn fool, he thinks. But the anger - that’s not gone away; not totally. It makes him feel awful; rotten and drained and lost. 

Next to him, Eddie sniffs. Richie looks down at the sliver of space in between them. Eddie is gripping onto the edge of the front step. He wants so badly to reach out; to take his hand - not because he’s in love with him, but because he wants that comfort; wants to comfort Eddie, wants to comfort himself, wants the feel of warm skin against his own, the touch of another person who has seen the things he’s seen and doesn’t think he’s crazy. “Let’s do that,” he says, “let’s call him. Another day.”

Eddie smiles, just a little, and pushes himself to his feet. 

Richie feels oddly drained. He picks his lighter up and passes it between his hands, just for something to do. He says, “I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I’m dreaming half the time. I woke up this morning and thought you weren’t here; that you weren't ever here.” He doesn’t say what he really means, which is, _I thought you were dead._

Eddie is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I think you’re a lot of things, Richie Tozier, but I don’t think you’re crazy. Not like that, anyway.”

Richie looks up at him, squinting against the sun. 

Eddie says “I feel that way too, sometimes.” He looks at Richie. “A lot lately, actually. Like I’m dreaming. Or - like I’m sleepwalking. Like I’m not really in control of my own life.” He looks a little embarrassed then, for some reason, and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt in control.”

Richie looks away; back to his front gate. “That fucking clown,” he says. He stands up.

Eddie says, “Jesus Christ, please put some fucking pants on. You’re an adult. Do your poor neighbours have to deal with this shit every day?”

Richie laughs. It feels good to laugh. 

Together, they head back inside. 

*

Richie has the same dream the next night. And the night after that. He struggles to fall asleep, and when he does, he finds himself jerking bolt upright in the middle of the night, his skin slick with sweat, a yell caught in his throat. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever cried out - Eddie doesn’t mention it the second morning he’s at Richie’s house, or the third - but, Richie thinks, perhaps he’s just being polite.

On Eddie’s first full day in California, Richie had driven him out to get groceries (it turned out that Eddie did, in fact, drink oat milk.) They had ended up separating in the store to focus on gathering their respective supplies, though Richie had ordered Eddie not to check out once he’d gotten everything he wanted; “I’m gonna pay,” he’d said, though once he was alone in the cereal aisle he’d begun to regret this. Did he come off as controlling, he’d wondered anxiously? Was he being possessive? Was he acting like Eddie’s wife? Like his _mother? _The guilt had eaten him up inside, consuming him as he’d wandered aimlessly from shelf to shelf, feeling sick, picturing Eddie realising he’d made a terrible mistake coming to Richie, Richie and his grasping hands, who _wanted _too much, and bolting out into the street and the city and out of Richie’s life, for good. 

He’d thrown what he thought was a box of Frosted Flakes into the shopping cart, and turned blindly down the next aisle. 

Everything in front of him had been cold and white, and it had made him feel like he was sinking into some sort of sensory deprivation tank. There was music playing overhead, he’d known, and other people around him, but it had felt like the sounds of the store were slipping away from him. He’d felt like he was on a beach, stood close to the shoreline, barefoot in the wet, heavy sand and facing away from the ocean. It had felt as though the water was lapping at his ankles, sucking the sand out from beneath his heels, pulling him down, down, back, like he was skiing backwards, falling endlessly into nothing. 

“Are you Richie Tozier?”

The cold, he had realised, slowly, was the dairy fridge. He was at the grocery store, staring into the dairy fridge, and somebody was speaking to him. 

“Hello? Dude, are you okay?”

He’d turned, stiffly, feeling like it had been a thousand years since he last moved his body. 

There had been a kid looking at him - college-age, he’d thought, though he wasn’t good at guessing the ages of anyone much younger or older than himself. 

The kid had stared at him, looking kind of weirded out. 

“You okay, man?” he’d asked. 

“What?” Richie had said. He’d blinked. “I’m fine.”

The kid had said, “It’s just, you were standing there for like, five minutes. I was talking to you and you weren’t moving.” He’d paused, then he’d said, “Are you high?”

“Fuck,” Richie had said. “No, I’m not high.”

He had been feeling that way a lot lately, since Derry. Stupidly, perhaps, he’d sort of assumed that once Eddie was there with him he might start to feel better. If anything, he’d thought, taking into account the call with Stan, plus the nightmares, he actually felt worse. 

The college kid had said, “Oh, okay.”

Richie had continued his staredown with a rubbery white ball of mozzarella. 

“Can I have a picture?”

“Huh?” Richie had looked back up. 

The kid was still there, staring at him.

“A picture. Can I have a picture, dude?”

“Oh. Sure.”

He’d made no effort to move - his body had felt far too heavy. The kid had needed to edge in next to him, face the refrigerator with him, hold his phone out between plastic pots of heavy cream to get the right angle. Richie had stared into his own face on the screen, rather than at the camera lens. He looked haggard, he’d thought, like he’d just been smacked in the face with a two-by-four.

The kid had seemed pleased regardless. He’d said, “Thanks, man. You’re really funny, dude. I saw your show here in LA, back in February?”

“Cool,” Richie had said. Then, when his brain had finally started kicking into gear: “Thanks. I, uh...hope you liked it.”

“Sure,” the kid had said, “it was great.”

Richie hadn’t said anything. 

“Uh,” the kid had said, “well, it was good to meet you. Thanks for the picture, man.”

“Richie,” a voice had called, and Richie had turned to see Eddie, just a few feet away, holding a carton of oat milk and a bag of pasta.

“Oh, sorry,” the kid had said. “Um - thanks again, dude.”

“He’s my friend,” Richie had said, quickly, but by then the kid had already gone. 

Eddie had come closer, frowning, peering up at him. 

“Are you okay?” he’d asked.

Richie, feeling like he was underwater, had said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t though, not at all, and he, now, thinking back on this encounter, he thinks that Eddie could tell. 

He feels like there’s dust in his eyes, cotton balls in his ears, static in his brain. 

It hadn’t gotten any better when they’d returned to Richie’s either, and it certainly hadn’t improved after Eddie had gone to bed, and Richie was left alone in his bedroom. 

The static had grown louder. 

There had been a pain in his chest, a terrible pain that continues to plague him as the days go by, and no matter how still he’d lain in his bed that night, how deeply and slowly he’d breathed, he couldn’t fall asleep. Perhaps this was a good thing, he’d thought, remembering his dreams.

But the thing was, he was trapped - trapped between two visions, one which haunted his waking mind, and one which prowled his head whilst he slept. 

In one, Eddie was alive and laughing and kissing him in his house, _their _house, their kitchen, and they were joking and they had a dog and he was tugging Eddie down into his lap. And in the other, Eddie was skewered above him, crying out in agony and leaking blood and guts all over the floor of a dark cave, dying in his arms, rotting alone as the rocks began to cave in. 

Eddie came back, he had told himself, Eddie came back to us. He was alive, and Stan was alive, and they were all alive and they’d killed It and escaped and they were okay. And then he’d thought of the Deadlights, how it had all seemed so _real_, how, for a few blissful moments everything was okay and he had Eddie in his arms and they were happy. And Eddie was there now, Richie had told himself; he was sure he was. Only - only how could he know for sure? How could he know he wasn’t still caught in that bright golden beam, suspended between the earth and rot, underneath Derry, dirty and bleeding and doomed? 

Back in the Townhouse, he’d asked Ben to show him the time - he’d convinced himself that clocks didn’t exist in dreams; that if he could just see a clock that would prove everything was real; that Eddie _did _come back. 

Only - 

He’d thought back to Derry; back to what he’d seen in the Deadlights. 

Was there a clock in that dream, he’d asked himself. He’d thought that there wasn’t - then he’d thought that there was - and then he’d wondered if he’d only thought that there was one because the house he’d seen was his house, the kitchen he’d seen was his kitchen, and there _was _a clock in his kitchen, and his subconscious mind had simply supplied the clock, filling in the blanks, the way memory is wont to do. 

He had found himself, several times, getting out of bed, standing at the door to his own room, fists clenched, wondering if he should go and check - just check that Eddie was definitely there, that he was definitely in Richie’s guest room, safe and well and alive.

He had hated himself for doing this; hated the idea of looming over Eddie like a perverted, freakish shadow in the night, watching him while he slept, counting each breath he’d drawn in, each sigh he’d huffed out. 

And so he had tossed and turned and gritted his teeth, and had wondered what it would take to staunch the pain. 

*

Richie’s house is nice. Eddie feels a bit foolish for assuming it wouldn’t be - or, not that it wouldn’t; he knows Richie’s successful, knows Richie has money. Rather, he had imagined, foolishly, he thinks now, that Richie’s home would simply be a larger version of his childhood bedroom - possessions and candy and clothes strewn everywhere, the radio constantly blaring, stacks of paper and notebooks covered in Richie’s messy chicken scratch covering the floor and the desk, his cigarettes, and later, pot shoved hastily beneath his bed, hidden away from his mom, though both of his parents had smoked like chimneys, a fact which had horrified Sonia Kaspbrak and led to her eventually electing to drive Eddie to the next town over to get his teeth looked at, rather than go to Wentworth Tozier, who had simply raised his eyebrows and said, “Is that so?” when Mrs Kaspbrak had divulged to him Eddie’s extensive medical history, and winked at Eddie as he helped him down from the chair. (Eddie remembers being very taken with Richie’s father, who was tall and handsome, with big white teeth, despite all the cigarettes he smoked, and sparkling blue eyes and laughter lines. He wonders now whether his mother had somehow known that her son liked the way Dr Tozier looked; eagerly anticipated their visits to him, unlike his many other medical trips, and whether that had played a part in her decision to end their patronage at Tozier & Associates Dental Practice.)

Richie’s house is much tidier than his teenage bedroom, thankfully, owing in the main, Eddie suspects, to the cleaner who Richie tells him comes over every Monday afternoon, though he does still keep his music turned up at all hours. He also has a tendency, Eddie notices, to put things down and forget to pick them back up again and put them away. Eddie finds himself itching to pick up all the mismatched socks, books, and assorted knick-knacks he finds dotted around the house, and has to firmly remind himself that it isn’t _his _home, and he should leave things how Richie likes them. 

It’s a nice place, nevertheless; large and white and and unfussy, a big Cape Cod-style space with high ceilings, wide, airy rooms, and pared-back decor which Eddie finds strangely calming, for the most part, in comparison to the apartment he and Myra had shared in New York, which had always felt a little overstuffed, a little staged, like a crime scene with a chair artfully tipped over, blood spatter carefully dashed across the kitchen floor. Eddie gets the impression, though, that Richie isn’t home much - or perhaps he simply isn’t interested in decoration - because although there are hints of his personality here and there (a framed Austin Powers poster in the hallway, which makes Eddie roll his eyes - Richie cracks up at that - a little Buddy Holly bobblehead on the desk in his office, which Richie shows him in a weirdly embarrassed kind of way, waving his hand like it doesn’t matter when Eddie asks about all the awards stacked up scattergun on the shelves behind him) for the most part, the house is fairly empty, fairly bland, which is not what he would have expected at all. 

He finds himself wondering how long Richie has had the house; where he’d lived before; where he lived when he went to college; which college he attended. 

He ends up asking him the morning after their strange and uncomfortable call with Stan. Richie had been quiet the rest of the day, pensive, Eddie thinks. He’d given Eddie a vague sort of tour then disappeared into his en-suite for a shower whilst Eddie had sat on the big L-shaped couch in the living room and tried not to touch anything. He’d spent the rest of the day hammering away at something on his laptop and texting silently on his phone (whilst Eddie thought about _his _phone, shoved to the bottom of his bag upstairs, and wondered whether he should make an attempt to block Myra on it - she would be calling and texting him with even more fervour than she had done whilst he was in Derry, he’d thought; she had certainly done so when he was still in his hotel in New York and had shown no signs of letting up during the cab ride to JFK - or just throw it away and buy a new one.) Later on, he’d asked Eddie if he had any grocery requests, and they’d made a quiet, somewhat awkward journey out to Trader Joe’s together, where Richie had gallantly insisted on paying for everything, and ended up being cornered by an enthusiastic fan, an experience he’d seemed oddly put out by, though Eddie supposes that the excitement and sheen of being a celebrity is something that loses its appeal pretty quickly.

“Berkeley,” Richie tells him, and Eddie groans out loud, leaning his head against his hand. “What?”

Eddie grins up at him. “I forgot you were smart.”

Richie laughs. 

“It used to make me crazy, how you never studied and still managed to get all A’s.”

Richie says, “If it’s any consolation, I had a pretty rude awakening once I got there.”

“What did you major in?” Eddie asks. 

“Political Science,” Richie says, and Eddie throws his hands up in the air. 

Richie winks at him over the rim of his coffee mug. He still seems tired, Eddie thinks, despite the grin, despite the way he’s playing into Eddie’s questions. There are purplish crescents beneath his usually bright eyes that Eddie isn’t sure were there during their clown-hunting trip, and certainly weren’t when they were children. He’s been cheery all morning, laughing and joking and teasing in the way Eddie remembers, but it feels like there’s an odd strain there; something that didn’t exist before. It reminds Eddie of the way he’d walked around Derry with his hands shoved so deep into the pockets of his leather jacket the fabric had begun to stretch around his knuckles. 

He wonders, worriedly, if it’s something he’s done; if it’s bothering Richie, him being here, hanging around his home, demanding he speak to Stan, pestering him with questions about his life, admonishing him for smoking in his own home, using his stuff, taking up space. It would make sense, he thinks; he knows he’s not the easiest person to live with, or even get on with; he’s been told so enough times. 

Then again, he could just be tired. Could just be recuperating from his argument with Stan, or the fact that he’s cancelled his tour, or come out to his friends after forty years in the closet. It could be anything. 

Nevertheless, he cannot bear it - the idea that Richie might be mad at him, or mad full stop. Emotions are, Eddie thinks, frightening things, too loud and too bright, and they press in insistently on him, the leaden, cold taste of guilt settling in his stomach and refusing to dissipate. Still, it might have been easier to deal with if Richie had still been outwardly angry, he reflects. That wouldn’t be so bad. It’s the quiet upset that gets him, that starts the icy trickle of fear in his sternum and down through his abdomen. When people are quiet like this but won’t tell you what’s wrong, it means they’re mad, and worse, it means they’re mad at _you. _

Eddie supposes he should be glad that his mother never hit him like Bev’s father hit her; that Myra never raised her fist like Tom did, and the panic makes him feel stupid. But he can’t help it. And he doesn’t think he could explain it if anybody asked. 

The best thing he can do, he tells himself, is to help assuage the anger, the upset; fix the problem; make Richie happy again. And over ten years spent as one of Richie Tozier’s best friends has taught him that one of Richie’s favourite things to do is play fight. He doesn’t think Richie would be particularly pleased if he jumped on top of him and started kicking and scratching the way they’d messed around as kids, but Richie Tozier is a man of many words. And so, teasingly, heart thumping, Eddie says, “Did everyone at Berkeley find you as annoying as we did?”

Richie says, “Oh, yeah,” and Eddie laughs. The strange ball inside his core begins to unknot, just a little. 

“What did you do after college?”

“What is this, 60 Minutes?”

Eddie huffs, and starts to tell Richie to fuck off, but Richie just smiles at him, shaking his head. 

“I did a bunch of stuff. I worked in radio for a bit. Then I was a production runner for a while. And when I needed money I waited tables at this whacky restaurant where we all rollerbladed everywhere.”

Eddie says, “That sounds horrendous.”

Richie snorts. “It wasn’t bad.” He still looks tired, Eddie thinks, but he’s _talking. _They’re _talking. _And he doesn’t seem mad - not at Eddie. He’d said he wasn’t mad with him, he thinks to himself. But then again, he supposes you can’t always trust what other people say. Sometimes it’s not what they say, but how they say it. Sometimes people say they’re fine, when really they’re furious. 

He swallows, forcing himself to focus again on their conversation. “Then, what, you got into stand-up?”

“Yeah. I started writing for TV. Got _discovered._” He wiggles his fingers, like he’s casting a spell. “I was on a couple of shows, in some movies. You ever see any of them?”

Eddie doesn’t think he did, but he can’t be sure. So many parts of his life feel like big black holes - not just his childhood - and he wonders if that’s the clown’s lasting influence too, spreading like a stain across his entire existence. He thinks about billboards he might have walked past with Richie’s face on; times he’s flipped past his wide grin, channel-surfing late at night. He wonders if the same thing happened with bookstores - if he just so happened to blink as he passed the books penned by Bill Denbrough. 

“I don’t know,” he says, and it feels frightening, admitting that.

“Good,” Richie says, “it’s pretty embarrassing.” 

Eddie seriously doubts this. He doesn’t think Richie’s ever found anything embarrassing. Even as a kid, Richie had always embodied the adage that any attention was good attention. That summer, he’d been preoccupied with, horrified by, the thought of going missing; more so than any of the others, Eddie thinks. 

“What about you, then?” Richie says, and he leans back in his chair, kicking his long legs out in front of him. “What’s ol’ Eds been up to since he got dragged kicking and screaming to New York?”

It’s not nice, thinking about that; being manhandled into the front seat of his mother’s overly-full car, the summer before his junior year, and driven away. 

Bill, he recalls, had already left Derry at that point. His parents, understandably, hadn’t been able to bear remaining, in that suddenly too-large house, with that one extra, empty bedroom. Bev was gone, too - to Portland, she was the first to go - and then Stan, shortly after Bill, when his grandfather had died and his family had moved south to care for his grandmother. Ben had still been in Derry at that point, he remembers, though he hadn’t been there to say goodbye - he’d been dragged away on vacation by his parents - and he isn’t sure when he’d managed to get out. Probably when he went to college, he supposes, like Richie. He hopes so, anyway; can’t bear the thought of one of them being left behind alone - although, after all, that had been poor Mike’s fate in the end. 

Richie had come to say goodbye, he recalls. He’d stared at his shoes and tried not to cry as they said their farewells in the driveway, his mother huffing and puffing loudly as she stuffed the last few bits from the house onto the back seat. 

“Your mother will be wondering where you are, Richard,” she’d said, more than once, saying _mother _and _Richard _with a special flavour of venom specifically reserved for the Toziers. 

Eddie wonders now whether she had her suspicions about the way her son looked at Richie as well as the way he’d looked at Wentworth. After the summer with the clown, when Richie had suddenly shot up to six foot and developed a rash of pimples along his jaw, she’d stopped letting him in the house. Outside of school, they’d had to sneak around, hanging out without her knowledge, in the slowly emptying clubhouse, or at the park, or at Richie’s home (Richie had gone off the arcade after that summer.) Richie had picked at the spots on his chin self-consciously and made a hundred stupid jokes about Sonia Kaspbrak. Eddie had still stared up at him, entranced. 

“See ya, Eds,” he’d said that last morning. 

Eddie, his throat catching dangerously, had said, “Don’t call me Eds, Rich.”

“You’ll write me?” Richie had said, hopefully. “Or call? You have my number, right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie had said, though the memory of Bill and Stan and Bev saying the same thing had crept unspoken between them; unpleasant and unnamed as a thousand other things they didn’t talk about. 

Richie had stared at him, his eyes wide and oddly bright, and Eddie, suddenly, had found himself saying, the honesty raw and horrid, “I’ll miss you, you know.”

Richie had blinked, he thinks, remembering - and Eddie’s face had heated up - and then, blessedly, he was saved; Mike had appeared over the horizon, on his bike, calling Eddie’s name and waving one hand in the air. 

“Eddie!” Mrs Kaspbrak had said, sharply - if there was one family in Derry she disliked more than the Toziers, it was probably the Hanlons, and that was purely because of the colour of their skin - but Eddie had rushed to Mike, throwing his arms around his shoulders. Mike had broadened out too, even more than Richie, and was by then attending and playing football at Derry High. Their goodbye had been short and awful, and he’d cried, he remembers, twisted at the waist so he could stare out the car window at Richie and Mike’s shrinking faces for as long as he possibly could. And that had been that.

Eddie shrugs. “Not much,” he says. 

It’s true. The apartment he and his mother had moved into in New York - shared with one of his mother’s sisters - was about half the size of their house in Derry. The walls had been way too thin; the street outside far too close. 

He’d forgotten about Derry, and Richie, and the Losers, and the clown, in a matter of days. He’d started attending school in the city, and had kept his head down, been pulled out sick way too frequently, taken part in no sports, and left with decent grades. 

He’d tried to move out three times - once when he started college (his mother had cried); once when he’d graduated (his mother had fainted and had to spend a week in bed with her nerves); and once a couple of months into his first proper adult job (his mother had told him he was being foolish; that he was _sick, _and he couldn’t possibly look after himself in the horrible, dirty city all alone.) Eddie had wondered, many times, why she’d dragged him out there when she was the one who complained incessantly about the noise and the smell and the dirt. He’d never dared ask her. 

“No way,” Richie says, waving a hand around dramatically. “Come on. Where’d you go to school? What did you study? What happened to the MILF-in-chief?” 

“I am going to kill you,” Eddie says, “one day. I’ll strangle you and I swear to God, they’ll never find the body.”

“If I had a dollar for every death threat,” Richie says, unconcerned, and Eddie furiously presses his lips together in an effort not to laugh. “Alright, fine, you don’t have to tell me.”

He swings his legs back; pushes himself to his feet. 

Eddie sits at the big dining table, watching him as he goes to swill his coffee cup - large and white, the words "I don't work here" emblazoned on the side in bold orange print out in the sink. “I don’t know,” he says. “There’s nothing to tell.”

Richie says, “Okay,” peaceably, starts humming under his breath. 

The room is wonderfully bright and warm. 

“It wasn’t that great,” he says, slowly. “I mean, you know what my mom was like.”

From the sink, Richie makes a soft noise of agreement.

“Your life’s been a whole lot more exciting than mine,” Eddie says. 

Richie says, “I don’t know. I mean, I know getting hooked on coke and vomiting on yourself in front of Paris Hilton _seems _glamorous, but -”

Eddie laughs. “Paris Hilton?”

“Oh yeah.” He twists at the waist; winks at Eddie. “That’s hot,” he says, in a passable valley-girl drawl. 

Eddie shakes his head, covering his smile with one hand. 

“Thank you, thank you,” Richie says, bowing. 

“That was terrible,” Eddie says, but he’s laughing - he can’t help himself. It’s something he’d always done when Richie started doing his silly bits; something he’s never been able to control. 

Richie just grins at him, says, “Sure, sure, Eds,” and starts unloading the dishwasher. 

Eddie pushes his cup around in front of him. “I majored in statistics,” he says at last. 

Richie says, “Sounds like a laugh riot.”

“It was okay.”

Richie, stuffing a handful of silver forks into one of the kitchen drawers, says, “Did you like it?”

Eddie says, “I -” and then closes his mouth. The truth is, he doesn’t really know. It seems silly, when he thinks about it for too long, but he doesn’t really care to think too frequently on whether he _likes _things or not; never has. The problem is, once you start thinking about the things you like, you start taking note of the things you don’t. Eddie’s never wanted to examine those things too closely. Better to let them slide; to just accept any unpleasantness, let it make a home beneath your skin, allow it to fester and rot until it becomes too swollen and frightening to contemplate, let alone look at. 

He’d picked his major because it was the one his mother disliked least. He’d picked his college because it was the one closest to home. He’d picked Myra because she had suggested it, and he had found himself suddenly alone and rudderless, and it had been easy - too easy - to let her pick up where Sonia Kaspbrak had left off. _Liking _things hadn’t even been a blip on his radar, not since he’d arrived in New York - and even before then, enjoyment to Eddie always came with a big side helping of guilt. Spending time with his friends meant he loved them more than his mother. Spending time at the quarry, or the barrens, or the trainyard meant he was _making her worry. _The same thing with Myra. And then with himself: he didn’t finish a project at work - he felt guilty for not working harder - he stayed late at the office - he felt guilty for leaving his wife alone - he left the office, unable to leave her to wait a moment longer - he felt guilty for not finishing his work. And so it went on. On and on and on, the story of Eddie Kaspbrak’s life, one big circle, one man chasing his tail endlessly. 

He looks down into his cup.

“Sure,” he says. “It was okay. It got me my job.”

Richie says, “Yeah, well. You told me you hated your job.”

Eddie looks up; stares at him. “Holy fucking shit,” he says. “I forgot to quit my job!”

*

He ends up switching his phone back on that evening, after looking up how to block a number online. He does it in the living room, while Richie’s got the television on - some documentary on an obscure rock band Eddie’s never heard of - talking loudly, waving a slice of the pizza they’d ordered for dinner around to emphasise whatever insane shit he’s saying, and somehow, it makes it easier. 

Amongst the numerous messages from Myra and her family, there’s a text from Bev. It says, _Ur at Richie’s????? _It’s a day old, but when he sends a quick _Yes _back, she responds right away. 

_What happened? Are u okay?_

_Yeah, _he says, then he types, _I left her, _then erases it. Instead, he puts, _Just needed some space. _

Bev says, _Do you want to talk? Shall I call u?_

Eddie doesn’t particularly want to talk. He’s only just managed to psych himself up enough to do what he’s about to do, which, he thinks to himself, is essentially nothing. It’s not fixing the issue; it’s not a decision, or a decisive step, but just a way to buy himself more time. He can’t even begin to think of communicating with anyone about this - not even Bev, and least of all Myra. She’d accused him multiple times throughout their relationship of refusing to listen to her, and, to be completely truthful, it’s true. Eddie had learnt at a young age the usefulness of painkillers, of numbing creams, of bubble wrap and bandages. It’s cowardly, he knows, but it’s like picking at an open sore. He just wants peace - real peace, not the fingers-in-your-ears kind of peace he’d self-medicated with for so long. He just wants to rest.

If there’s one thing for which Eddie is eternally grateful for in Richie, it’s the fact that he doesn’t pry. Apart from the question he’d asked him in the car on the way back from the airport, Richie has barely acknowledged Myra’s existence. 

To Bev, he says, _It’s okay. Just trying to take a break from everything. Maybe talk later?_

_Okay, _Bev says, _take care. Love you. _

Another text flashes up before him, this one from Myra’s sister. 

Eddie breathes slowly, carefully. He has to do it. He remembers those conversations he’d had with Bev, back in New York. He remembers the conversation with Myra. He imagines trying to do it alone, in Richie’s guest room, whilst the incessant calls and texts and emails continue to flood the screen. He knows he couldn’t. He knows that if he was up there on his own, he would open the first text, listen to the first voicemail, and five minutes later be all packed up and booking the first flight back to JFK. 

He can’t do that, he tells himself; won’t do that. There’s a reason he left New York. 

The first thing he needs to do, he figures, is make it harder for himself to go back. 

He opens up an email, addresses it to his boss, cc’ing in HR, and tells them he’s putting in his notice, effective immediately. He apologises for the inconvenience. He puts something about being unwell - then he erases it. No need to explain, he tells himself, firmly. He asks them to send any correspondence via email, and not to his home address. Then he presses send.

He wonders if they will call his emergency contact - Myra - and ask her if he’s okay. He wonders if they’ll tell her he’s resigned. He imagines her wails of anguish. 

“I’ve done it,” he tells Richie, once it’s over; once he’s sent in his resignation and texted Myra a single short, stern message instructing her not to contact him and promising he will be in touch once he’s had chance to think things over, then blocked her (she will still try to get in touch, he knows. He wonders if perhaps he should get a new phone; a new email address. It all seems like so _much _at the moment, though, and he’s tired.)

Richie looks at him across the room, eyebrows raised. 

“Quit my job,” Eddie says. “And, uh. Blocked - Myra. I just - I can’t talk to her right now. So I blocked her.”

“Yeah?” Richie says. 

“Yeah.”

“Well. Good for you, Eds.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says. He hesitates. “I might need to get a new number, though. Or even a new phone; I don’t know how it works. And an email address. She’s pretty, um, persistent.”

Richie says, “Huh.” He scans Eddie’s face through the dimmed evening light. 

Eddie swallows. “Do you think it’s - okay?” he says. “That I did that? Blocked her? I mean, she must be so confused. And worried. She doesn’t even know I’m here; what if something happens? And the car - the car is a company car, it’s not even ours, really, they’ll need to arrange to come and get it and then she won’t have a car, and -”

“What did you say to her when you left?” Richie says. “You told her it was over, right?”

“Yeah, but -”

“Did you tell her why?”

A pause. Eddie fights the urge to bite his lip. 

“Yeah,” he says, eventually, “kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“I just - I said it wasn’t working. I said I was unhappy and we weren’t good for each other. I should really have told her more than that, shouldn’t I? She said it was totally out of the blue for her. She must be so worried - what about our insurance? What about the apartment, the car -”

Richie says, “Eds, forget about the damn car.”

Eddie groans; covers his face with his hands. He’s made a terrible mistake, he thinks; a terrible mess. 

“I’m not the person to be giving relationship advice,” Richie says. “I’ve literally had multiple boyfriends break up with me because I wouldn’t even hold their hand in public. But, like - even I can see this shit wasn’t good for you. You’re a wreck, dude. You were fucking _freaking _out on me when you called - you spent three days in a fucking hotel room. You _begged _me not to let you go back to her.”

Eddie’s mouth opens a little; he doesn’t remember saying that. He’s cold suddenly, cold and ashamed. He wants desperately to be back in New York; wants for none of the past couple of days to have ever happened. And yet he thinks he’d almost rather go one more round with the clown than have to face his wife again. He thinks longingly of the Valium hidden at the bottom of his suitcase.

“So I’m not gonna let you,” Richie says. “I’m not letting you go back to her, Eds. I don’t know what happened with you two, and you don’t have to tell me, but I promised I wouldn’t let you go back to her.”

Eddie can’t bear to meet the other man’s eyes. He’s just so tired; tired of feeling like this, like he’s running and running and grasping for something just out of reach.

Richie hesitates, then he shifts towards Eddie on the sofa, pizza abandoned somewhere behind him. 

“You seemed so sad,” he says, and then he looks away, like he feels guilty or something, “when I saw you again. In Derry.” The light from the television scatters like a kaleidoscope across his glasses.

Eddie presses his lips together. 

Richie says, “I don’t want you to be sad. You know, when we were kids, I just - I just wanted to make your laugh, you know?” His voice is low and quiet.

The admission stops something in Eddie’s windpipe, and it takes a moment before he’s able to nod, and say, “You always did, Rich.”

Richie looks at him. Behind them, the stupid documentary blares on. The music is shitty - Eddie hates it. But he hardly notices. Richie’s smiling at him - a real, gentle, genuine smile - and then he reaches out, and tugs Eddie into his side with one arm. 

“C’mere,” he says, voice rough, and Eddie goes. 

It’s kind of awkward at first. Eddie is tense - he’s always tense, of course he is - and sat at a funny angle, spine straight and body braced so he doesn’t end up resting all of his weight on Richie, and he still feels anxious about Myra, and his job, and guilty for what he’s done and the way the sensation of Richie’s arm around his shoulders makes his heart shudder, and he can’t help but think back to that last night in Derry, how Richie had felt on top of him, how his voice had gotten quiet and deep, and the warmth of his breath against Eddie’s skin and the sweet things he’d said, and how he’d liked it. 

Richie murmurs, “Jesus Eds, it’s like sitting with a fucking hunk of rock. Relax a little.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says. He doesn’t say anything about how against his side, Richie feels the same; stiff and nervous. He relaxes though - tries to - and gradually, Richie’s focus slips back to the TV, and the weight of his arm across Eddie’s shoulders gets softer and heavier. 

They don’t say much more, but the evening is peaceful, and Richie is warm. And Eddie closes his eyes, his phone forgotten at the bottom of the couch.

They don’t talk about it in the morning.

*

The next time Eddie talks to Stan, he does so without Richie. He feels kind of bad doing so, which is dumb, he knows, because Richie knows what he’s doing - he’d told him he was going to call him that morning, braced against his coffee mug, waiting for Richie to get mad about it, or upset, but Richie had just said that was cool, and that he was going to get gas and “run some, uh, errands and shit” (Eddie had wondered if they really needed groceries or if Richie was making excuses to avoid Stan), and then he’d said, “Hey, Eds -”

“Yeah?” Eddie had said, and he’d felt his whole body physically tense up. 

Richie had scratched the back of his head, looking as awkward and gangly as he had at thirteen, refusing to meet Eddie’s eyes. 

“Just - tell him I’m sorry, yeah? I’ll, um - I’ll call him later. I was a dick, and I do wanna talk to him. I just…” He’d trailed off, looking a bit hopeless.

Eddie, since meeting up with Richie again, had formed the impression that the other man wasn’t in the business of apologising to people very often, now that he was a celebrity - “I’m not a _celebrity,_ Eds,” Richie had groaned when Eddie had called him that, despite the fact that he’d been recognised in _Derry _of all places.

“Okay,” Eddie had said, and Richie had looked relieved. 

He relays this all to Stan over Skype later on, after Richie has gone out.

“He will come round,” he says, anxiously, tracing the grain of the wood on Richie’s big dining table with the tip of one finger. “He just...y’know.” He shrugs. In truth, he isn’t sure what to make of Richie’s outburst. The stuff he’d said about the others - about their friends, and what had happened after they’d escaped the Well House - Eddie hadn’t known any of that. He doesn’t quite know how he feels about it either, though he supposes he understands. He’d known they’d left him behind, of course; he can’t begrudge them that, and he’s relieved that they dragged Richie out, rather than let him be crushed by the decaying building in the way he’d apparently wanted. The idea of the others laughing and joking, less than an hour after his apparent death, however - he’s not sure. Part of him gets it - they were in shock, they’d just killed the thing that had terrorised them since childhood, the thing that had, directly or indirectly, snatched away the lives of Georgie, of Stan - albeit temporarily - of Mike’s parents, they’d _won _\- and another part of him is burnt, bitter and upset at the idea of it; of his body emptying of blood and growing cold whilst they swelled with life - and yet another part thinks it’s somewhat hypocritical of Richie to get angry at others for laughing and joking in dire straits; Richie, who has spent his whole life being inappropriate and irritating and pushing too far. 

It’s confusing, is all he can surmise. 

“It’s okay,” Stan says, just the same way he’d done on their last call. “I mean, he was kind of right.”

“What?” Eddie is horrified. “No, what? He wasn’t, Stan! What he said about you - he was being a dick. He _knows _he was being a dick.”

“I should’ve come back,” Stan says, and he presses a hand to his forehead. He seems tired. “I should have. It was...I was a coward. Remember last time? When we were kids? I was a mess down there. I was never as brave as you guys - any of you.”

“You came with us!” Eddie says, loudly, before Stan can go on berating himself. “Even when you were afraid - you came. You fought It with us.”

“But you came back -”

“We came back because we were fucking miserable, Stan!” Eddie insists. He feels righteous, suddenly, in a way he doesn’t think he’s felt before. “We were all fucking miserable and we hated our lives and we didn’t care what happened to us.”

The words shock him as soon as they’re out of his mouth. He hadn’t even thought about it before - why he’d gone back to Derry so readily when he’d been so, so frightened. He’d assumed it was bravery; the reignition of a flame he’d felt as a child. Now he’s suddenly not so certain.

Stan stares at him for a long moment, brows drawn up high above the bridge of his nose. “I was so frightened,” he says, finally. “I’d forgotten I could feel fear like that; that I’d _ever _felt fear like that. It felt like - it felt like he - _It _\- was right outside the door, waiting for me. Like - like It’d been there in the corner of the room the whole time and I’d never noticed. All I could think about was getting away.”

Eddie blinks, slowly. “You remembered right away?”

“Yeah.” Stan frowns. “You didn’t?”

“No. Not...not right off. I remembered in bits. I’m still remembering now. I was scared when I got Mike’s call - I didn’t know why, but I didn’t remember _It. _We all - all of us except Mike - we forgot about It - Pennywise - until we actually got to Derry.”

“Shit,” Stan says. 

Eddie pinches his lower lip between his teeth. Remembering all at once; he can’t imagine it. Can’t imagine the pain of being smashed with a cinder block of emotions and memories in the way Stan had been, a wrecking ball through what seemed to Eddie like a charmed life his friend had managed to forge for himself. 

He says, “Well...for what it’s worth, _I _wouldn’t have come back either if I’d remembered the clown.”

Stan smiles, sadly. “I just - I just can’t believe I got another chance. When I woke up, I was like, _fuck, _it didn’t work - I was so mad. I don’t remember much from...then...waking up, but I do remember that. Thinking how damn ironic it was I’d gone to all that trouble just to be killed by It anyway.”

Eddie laughs; he can’t help himself. Stan always did have the same dark sense of humour as Richie, he thinks. 

“I tried to forget it all again. But I felt so bad. The guilt - I couldn’t handle it. I thought, I can’t run from this anymore. So I called Mike back. He was, uh. Pretty surprised.”

Again, Eddie laughs. It feels so good to have his friend back. 

Stan eyes him curiously through his laptop screen. “What about you? Did you - did you really -” He hesitates.

A cold shiver creeps like a brush of icy fingers up his spine. “Yeah,” he says. “I, um. It - It got me. Fucking - _stabbed _me, right in my back, all the way through to my stomach.”

Stan’s eyes are wide and horrified. 

“I passed out. I lost a lot of blood. Richie told me they thought I was dead so they had to leave me behind. I kept wondering if it was possible that they were wrong, that I hadn’t really died, but I - I don’t see how - and now, you -” He hesitates. “You’re - we both came back, didn’t we? We both died.”

A moment. Eddie wonders if the wifi is lagging. 

Stan says, “Yes.”

Eddie bites down on his lip so hard he thinks he tastes the faint tang of blood, and for a second, he’s back there, in the cavernous dark, dirty and alone. It’s painful, almost; the contrast of the dark, dank maw of the space beneath Derry, and Richie’s bright, light living room on the California coastline, where the sun is baking his shoulders through the big windows at the back of the room, where there’s hardly a cloud in the wide blue sky. 

“I woke up in the mortuary. It was - days later. Even if I’d survived - no way would I have lasted that long.”

Eddie tightens his grip on the edges of the laptop. He’s never been in a mortuary - of course not - but he can picture it, hear it, smell it...the low, cold, buzzing lighting, the clang of cold metal doors and drawers, the sour tang of the formaldehyde. His stomach lurches horribly. 

“They were pretty confused, the hospital staff. Patty. Our family. You remember in Derry, how the adults acted when we were kids - how half the time it seemed like they were high, or blindfolded? Just - out of it. It was like that. I doubt any of them remember what happened now.” He pauses, considering. “Well. Maybe Patty. I don’t know. I try not to talk about - that part - to her. I don’t know how I’d begin to explain.”

“We _were _dead,” Eddie says, breathlessly. 

“We were,” Stan agrees. 

The room seems to be getting hazy at the edges. Eddie’s back and stomach are searing again, burning and freezing, and there is hot, slow liquid oozing down his body and soaking into his clothes and his vision is fading and his skin is tingling, like he’s being pricked by ten thousand needles. He’s hot and he’s cold and he’s shaking, he thinks, maybe, and he can’t hold himself vertically, he’s losing feeling in his hips and his legs and he isn’t sure how he’s still sat upright on the sofa - surely he should have poured like oil onto the the floor by now, he tells himself.

“Eddie!” Stan says, sharply.

Eddie starts. 

Stan is frowning into the screen, his expression guarded and cautious. 

Eddie says, “Sorry,” automatically - “Sorry, I’m fine -” but he _isn’t_, not really, not now he can feel it again, and see the place where he died, and _knows _that he died - oh God, Jesus Christ, he _died, _he _died _down there, he bled out beneath the sewers and who the fuck knew what dirt and germs and toxins and bacteria had crawled into his open wounds, peeled back the skin, slipped beneath and slid into his bloodstream, and he can’t stop thinking about it, the way his skin and tissue and organs must have slid across his bones and nerves again, knitted together, trapping the dirt and grime and filth _inside _him, _poisoning _him...and because he _died, _he fucking _died _down there, in the clown’s lair, his heart will have stopped, his organs will have shut down, his lungs stopped pumping…

Up until this point, he hasn’t thought about it too much - the fact that he might have _died, _the logistics of it. He’d been hoping, perhaps somewhat foolishly, that things were not as they appeared and that he’d somehow managed to survive and the care he’d been taking of his health had finally paid off. But now, the blinkers are off and the light is blinding. He died. He _died _beneath the Well House, _died _at the hands of the clown, and Eddie knows what happens when you die, has known about it since his father passed away: his mother had told him everything, and as soon as he’d been able to he’d read her big old medical books from cover to cover, and he knows about all the disgusting, horrible things that happen to your body when it shuts down, and he knows about sepsis, and gangrene, and infections and clots and hemorrhaging and he can’t stop thinking about the grime that might now be creeping beneath his skin like maggots, like bugs in an old horror movie, rotting him from the inside out, burrowing and biting…

He’s always been rotting, he knows. 

He thinks of the leper. 

He slaps a hand to his chest, wild with fear, half-convinced that he’s going to find nothing there, no breath, no heartbeat, no pulse at his wrist or neck - but beneath his clammy palms he feels it, that old frightened thud-thud-thud, the shallow flutter of his chest, air cold and much too thin, choking his windpipe, and Stan is calling him again, Eddie, _Eddie _-

“Are you okay?” Stan demands, squinting at his webcam, all the way across the country in Atlanta, fingers clenched around the black plastic arms of his office chair. 

He’s hyperventilating, he realises, suddenly, swooping back into himself from the dark and wet of that place beneath the crust of the earth, back into Richie’s house, in front of his laptop, heart pounding, hairline prickling. He feels awful.

“Eddie?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says. His chest and throat are still tight. What, he thinks, suddenly, frightenedly, has he done with his inhaler? “I - sorry.”

“You went really quiet then,” Stan says, carefully. “And quiet. You looked sick. I thought you were gonna pass out.”

“Me too,” Eddie tells him. “Ugh. I think - I think I might be sick. When I came here, my meds schedule got all screwed up. I need to - I need to make sure I’ve got the right medication. Go to a pharmacy. Maybe I can call my doctor and see if they can prescribe something I can pick up here -”

Stan says, “Maybe,” like he’s not really convinced by Eddie’s plan. “Eddie, have you - have you talked about...this...with anyone?”

Eddie scoffs. “What, being dead?”

Stan says, “Any of it.”

Eddie isn’t sure what Stan means by this. “No,” he says, irritably, “I’ve not talked to anyone about fucking - being made into a clown kebab, Stan. Who the fuck -”

“The others,” Stan says, infinitely patient, and Eddie feels horrible. Stan is just trying to help him. Stan’s been through some shit, too. There’s no need, he tells himself, to be so unpleasant, so snappy. “Richie. They were there. They know -”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, and he hasn’t really thought about it too much until now, but the instant he begins saying the words, he knows they’re true. “I don’t think they - I don’t think they thought about it. Some of them weren’t even convinced I _had _died. At least, not in the usual sense of the word.”

Stan laughs quietly at this, a sad little sound that Eddie knows means, _oh, I get it_. 

Eddie says, “I don’t even - _I’d _hardly even thought about it, until now.” He pauses. “I wouldn’t think about it. Then I would see my - I have scars - from - you know. I would see them in the mirror and I would almost faint, every time. I nearly threw up. I didn’t wanna think it was real. But you -”

“Me too,” Stan says, and he flips back the wrists of the cardigan he’s wearing, and shows Eddie: two long, vertical, straight lines on each wrist, about four inches long, at least. A matching pair. 

“See how pale they are,” Stan says. “They should still be scarring. They should be purple.”

The scars are white. Eddie thinks about the scars on his own body; the cut on his face, the gouges on his back and stomach; how rapidly they had begun to heal. They’re still visible, but by all rights he should still be on life support. He should be stapled together. He shudders. He should, he thinks, be dead. 

“They’re healing,” Stan says, emphatically, and Eddie swallows hard. “You’re not a walking corpse, Eddie,” he says, quietly, and Eddie thinks of It - the leper - and barely suppresses a shudder. 

“Do you - do you talk to Patty about it?” he says. 

Stan sits back in his chair a little. “A bit,” he says. “I didn’t tell her about - you know. It. I don’t know. Maybe I will, one day.” His gaze grows somewhat distant. “She says - I mean, she didn’t expect it, but I’ve been on antidepressants for a while. Since before Mike’s call, I mean. We’ve been trying to have kids a long time. Doctors can’t figure out why we can’t. And - over the last year especially - things have been rough. Not with Patty,” he says, quickly, “Just - rough. I was anxious, really anxious. Couldn’t figure out why. Maybe I knew, somewhere, subconsciously, what was coming. You know, I ended up being diagnosed with OCD after I left Derry,” he says, suddenly. 

Eddie blinks. “Oh,” he says. He’s kind of surprised by the admission - but then again, not surprised at all. He remembers how Stan was as a child; fastidious and serious and careful.

“Yeah,” Stan says. He rubs a hand across his face. “I got put on meds, went to therapy. Was good for years, really good, got my shit together. Then last year…” He trails off. 

Eddie swallows. “I’m sorry, Stan,” he says, softly. 

Stan waves it off. “It’s okay. I’m working on it.” His gaze grows distant once again. “You guys never had an issue with It, when we were kids,” he says.

Eddie shifts in his seat. “I’d say we had some issues,” he says, and Stan grins. 

“I know. I mean - you had no issue _believing _in It; accepting It. You were all scared of It, yeah, but…” he trails off. “That whole summer I legitimately thought I was losing my mind. I’d stare into the mirror for hours at night, when I was alone, trying to catch myself off-guard. Thought I’d see myself blinking or something. I was so convinced I’d wake up one morning and find myself in a padded cell. Even after it was all over - even though we had the scars on our hands - I was still convinced it was a dream I’d made up.”

Eddie says, “Stan, I’m so sorry. I had no idea -”

“Sometimes I still think it wasn’t real,” Stan says. 

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to this. He stays quiet. 

“Maybe that’s one reason why I haven’t told Patty. I think that she won’t believe me, and then _I _won’t believe me, and then - I don’t know. I’ll forget again? I want so badly to forget, but I can’t - I know I can’t. I know something bad will happen if I do.”

“Do you think she wouldn’t believe you?” Eddie asks. 

Stan considers. “I don’t know,” he says. Then he says, “Maybe it doesn’t matter. I know she would listen.”

“That’s good,” Eddie says. He likes the sound of Patty. Maybe she’ll come on one of their calls, he thinks, one day. Then he says, “I don’t think there’s anyone I can tell. Even if they were there.”

Stan says, “What about Richie?”

Eddie links his fingers together; focuses on threading them together - unthreading - threading, like he’s weaving straw. “I don’t know,” he says, slowly. “I kinda get the impression Richie wants to forget everything. He doesn’t wanna talk about it. You know what he’s like. He just -” He presses his palms together. “Pushes everything down. I think the idea that I - we - you and I _died _\- I don’t think he can handle that. He was a mess when I got back, afterwards, y’know. And I think - maybe that’s why he’s so mad at you. He doesn’t know what to feel. It’s easier to push it away; act like nothing’s wrong.”

“Have you asked him?” Stan says. 

“No.”

Stan doesn’t say anything; just presses his lips together. 

“And I don’t wanna bother the others,” Eddie says. “Everyone has their own shit -”

“They’re your friends,” Stan says, gently. 

“Yours too!”

“Yeah,” Stan says, a little wistfully, and something inside of Eddie aches deeply. He finds himself longing, yet again, for the simplicity of youth; the seemingly endless summers; the long, scratchy grass in the Barrens; the metallic screech of engines as they passed through Derry train yard; the cold, sharp sting of ice cream; the shrieks and howls of his friends echoing in the quarry. Only those days are long gone, he thinks, with a pang of sadness, and it hits him with a kind of finality; the realisation that not only are those times over, but that they are never coming back - never can come back - and perhaps, he thinks, they never were quite so simple; he thinks of his mother; the trill of the school bell and the snarl of Henry Bowers; the glowing orange eyes in the cavernous pipes beneath the town. 

“It’s been good to talk,” Stan says. “To everyone.”

Eddie says, “Yeah. To other people who...know. Who get it.”

“I hate talking about the clown,” Stan says, emphatically. “But I know I have to. I could never make it real enough before. It was there and not there. Even now, sometimes I think I’m starting to forget. But I have to make it real, what we went through. Make it mean something.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. Then he says, “Stan, I think I need - I need to talk about it. About everything. I don’t know who to. But I just - I have to.”

It’s stuck inside of him, he thinks, like a tumour - all that history, those things he forgot, the knowledge of the clown and the fact that things as evil as It exist. And like a tumour, it must be excised. 

“We can,” Stan tells him. “We -” Then, from his side of the call, there’s a chime, like a message alert. Stan frowns, looks down. Then his eyebrows draw up in surprise.

“What?” Eddie says. “What?”

Stan looks up at him, eyes darkened and wary. “News alert,” he says, “for Derry. There’s been an earthquake in Derry.”

*

An earthquake, it turns out, is not quite the full picture. Within fifteen minutes of the initial article flashing up on Stan’s phone, the Losers’ Club group chat has been filled with stories of tropical storms, hurricanes, and floods. 

_What the hell is happening? _Ben says, sending the third report he’s shared that morning, this time about a sinkhole appearing in the middle of the road in and out of town. 

_Is everyone okay? _Bev says. _It’s fine here? This isn’t some apocalyptic shit right?_

Stan, newly added to the group by Mike, says, _Nothing to report here, _and sends a picture of what looks like his garden; bright, sunny, still. 

Richie says, _I am THIS close to walking into the sea, _to which Eddie responds, _Don’t text and drive!!! _but then he hears the front door swing open, and the sound of Richie’s boots echoing on the wooden floors. 

“Dude,” Richie says, appearing from the hallway. The LA Lakers hoodie he’d gone out in is slung across the crook of one arm, and his baseball cap is half hanging off his head. “What the fuck?”

Eddie tries not to let the relief show on his face, but he must fail, because Richie drops his cap and hoodie on the floor and strides over to him. “You okay?” he says. His hand is big and warm between Eddie’s shoulder blades, and all of a sudden, everything is a little less frightening. 

“Yeah,” says, knowing he sounds a little too breathless. “Yeah...Mike’s trying to call some friends from back in Derry, figure out what’s going on.”

“Jesus fuck,” Richie says. “Nobody’s still got family there, right?”

Eddie shakes his head. 

“Fuck,” Richie says again, and shrugs off his jacket, and sits down on the sofa.

They wait and wait for Mike to report back, to no avail. 

“Fuck,” Richie says again, and gets up. Then he sits back down. 

Eddie says, “D’you want me to pick up…” He trails off, gesturing at the items Richie had thrown onto the floor by the front door. 

“No,” Richie says. He doesn’t move for a long moment. He says, “I wonder if there’s anything on the TV about it.” Then he gets up again, and collects his hat and hoodie. 

Eddie opens up his laptop again. He hesitates, then types Derry_, Maine_ into Google, and clicks _News. _

It’s all there; the storm, the flood, the sinkhole. Apparently there’s also been a bridge collapse. He scrolls down a little further, pressing a fist against his mouth. 

_Derry Man’s “Miracle” Survival._

Eddie freezes. 

It’s a Derry Herald article, published a few weeks previously. There’s a small picture next to the headline of a man’s face, then, beneath it, a line of text, which reads, _Derry resident, Adrian Mellon, 23, survived what friends and family are calling “a violent homophobic attack” which culminated in attempted murder almost entirely unscathed. _

Eddie hesitates. Not what he’d thought, then. 

Stupid, he thinks. How would anybody know?

He stares at the headline a moment longer, then, decided, clicks on it with probably a little too much force. 

_Officials have called the Portland-born journalist’s survival “a miracle.” _

_“Mr. Mellon was beaten before an attempt was made by his attackers to drown him in the Derry Canal,” District Attorney, Tom Boutillier, stated. “Given the brutality of the attack, the extent of his injuries, and the length of time he spent in the water afterwards, the fact that he survived is, quite frankly, nothing short of a miracle.”_

“I need a drink,” Richie calls from the kitchen. “Eds, you want a beer?”

“No,” Eddie says, then reconsiders. “Actually, yes.”

Richie laughs. The sound is just a little too sharp. 

Eddie scrolls down the page.

_Dr. June King of Derry General Hospital echoed this sentiment, calling the speed of Mellon’s recovery “phenomenal.” _

_“I’ve never seen anything like it in my twenty years of practicing medicine,” she stated._

Richie appears again, a bottle of Coors Light in each hand. “Here,” he says, and puts Eddie’s down on the table. 

“Thanks,” Eddie says. 

_Speaking to reporters, Mellon’s partner Don Hagarty who witnessed the attack claimed it was motivated by homophobia. “Adrian was targeted for being gay,” Hagarty said. “This was a hate crime, pure and simple. The police and the state need to take these kinds of offences seriously and punish the perpetrators to the full extent of the law.”_

Richie says, “Any news?”

Eddie glances down at his phone. “No,” he says.

Richie breathes out through his nose, hard. 

_Hagarty does not believe that tackling this kind of crime is purely a matter for law enforcement, however. “It starts in schools and at home,” he said. “Educators, parents, religious leaders - the idea that being gay is wrong or unnatural or sinful is one that is taught to kids like Adrian’s attackers from a young age. It is learned and perpetuated. We as a community have a responsibility to stamp it out.”_

Beneath the article is the photograph featured alongside the headline on the Google results page, blown up, and captioned, _Victim Adrian Mellon, 23._

Eddie closes his laptop. His heart is pounding. Then he opens it; checks again. 

That face. Eddie knows that face. 

He closes the laptop once more. 

Adrian Mellon is the man he’d met beneath the Well House. The man who’d laughed and made jokes and told him about his boyfriend; the man who’d also been attacked by Pennywise. His head spins. 

Richie is watching him, he realises suddenly. He looks up. 

“You okay?” Richie says. “You look like you’ve just seen your mom naked.”

Eddie, gathering himself, says, “If you make one more fucking joke about my mom -”

Richie laughs, then reaches out towards him; squeezes his wrist. “Hey,” he says, “It’ll be okay. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. We’re okay, right?”

Eddie blinks; realises what Richie’s talking about. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah. Yeah. We’re - we’re okay.”

Richie squeezes his wrist again; lets go. 

Eddie wonders if he should try and get in touch with Adrian; contact the paper and ask if they can pass on a message from him, or look him up on Twitter, or whatever. But then, what would he say? Hey man, sorry about the homophobes, by the way, do you remember a clown? Do you remember being stuck in the sewers with some dumb frightened bozo who had a hole in his face and was covered in blood? Do you remember that? No, he thinks. He’s a fucking dumbass. Of course he can’t do that. He puts his thumb in his mouth; chews violently on the nail. 

His and Richie’s phones suddenly buzz simultaneously. 

Richie gets to his first. 

“Shit,” he says, squinting at the screen. 

Eddie’s chest tightens. “What?” he says.

Richie says, “Mike says the storm didn’t hit anywhere else. Even the next town over; they got some rain, some wind - that was it.”

“Fuck,” Eddie says, and checks his own phone. 

Mike has just sent a new message. It says, _Everyone I spoke to was okay. They’re confused, but okay. _

Bill says, _Any deaths?_

Mike says, _None reported. No clown sightings. Very weird. _Then, _I don’t know guys - maybe this is a good thing. Like a purge. A detox. Maybe this just means everything’s over for real this time. _

Eddie says, softly, “What do you think?”

Richie scratches his jaw slowly. His stubble is growing out, and when his fingers move, it rasps like sandpaper. Eddie resists the urge to tell him that he needs to shave. “I don’t know, Eds,” he says, eventually. “I don’t know.” 

Eddie puts his face into his hands. He wants, he suddenly realises, for Richie to throw an arm around him like he had the other night; to pull him close against his body and make him feel warm and safe. He wonders if Richie would do it, if he asked. 

He doesn’t ask. He keeps his eyes closed. 

Richie doesn’t say anything else. 

*

Bev ends up calling him a few days later.

“I’m sorry,” she says, breathlessly, as soon as Eddie picks up. “I know you said you needed some space, _I know, _and you can totally tell me to fuck off if you want to, but I just - I’ve been so worried about you, then Mike said you were at Richie’s, and I just - I need to know you’re okay. I’m sorry, I just had to check.”

She feels genuinely bad, Eddie can tell, and maybe if it were anybody else, Eddie would’ve hung up on them. Since blocking Myra and getting himself set up with a new number, he’s not had any further calls from her, though he knows it’s only a matter of time before she manages to somehow track him down and call again. She’s still emailing him too, despite him asking her not to, and so he’s pretty much abandoned his email account. Something else he’s going to have to start from scratch with, he thinks. 

Bev, though - Bev’s different. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says again, and he knows why she’s apologising - she gets it. 

“It’s okay,” he says, and he hears her breathe a sigh of relief down the other end of the line. “It’s okay. Things have just been - a bit crazy.”

“I’ll say!” she says, and they both laugh, a little nervously. There have been no further developments in Derry, according to Mike and the news alert notification Eddie now has set up on his phone, but they all know they can’t risk taking their eyes off the ball. 

“Do you think,” he says, but he can’t finish the sentence. “Do you think -”

Bev says, “Like Richie said: the scars on our hands are gone. You and Stan are okay. That has to mean _something, _right?”

“I guess,” Eddie says. He can’t stop thinking, though; about the storm and about Adrian Mellon and about the fact that he still feels so goddamn uneasy. 

“We have to believe it’s okay,” Bev says, then, more quietly, adds, “I have to - I can’t - I can’t spend another twenty-seven years feeling the way I did. Like I was being hunted. Having shitty fucking dreams and getting caught up with shitty fucking people.”

She’s right, of course. Eddie screws his free hand up into a tight fist. He’s still scared, though; always will be scared, he thinks. He forgot the clown, forgot everything that happened, and yet he still managed to spend years feeling like he was about to die. He wonders if that would have happened without It, or if that’s just the way he’s been built. He isn’t sure which option is better. Sometimes he feels like Derry has cursed him; other times like he himself is intrinsically cursed. Either way, the idea makes him nauseous.

“So,” Bev says, apparently trying for casual, “California?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He’s outside, out walking. He’s started doing this every day; walking in Sherman Oaks, even just round the block, is much nicer than the neighbourhood where he’d lived in New York, which was full of pigeons and dirt and yelling, where the sky was grey half the time and the air felt stagnated. He likes the neighbourhood Richie lives in; it’s clearly upscale, and fairly quiet, and pretty. He already knows the best routes to walk in the area; knows which stores Richie visits and how to get there. He’s always been good with directions, and it’s a strange thing he finds oddly calming, the notion of having a little map in his head, being able to organise the streets and paths and places around him into a grid, a neat, orderly flow from A to B. It helps him, he thinks, get out his next words. “I, uh,” he hesitates. “I left. Myra.”

Bev gasps. “You did?”

“Yeah.” He pauses at a crosswalk. “I still - I feel kinda weird about it. I quit my job too.”

“Eddie!”

“I know, I know. I’m actually having a whole mid-life crisis.”

She laughs. “Oh my God, Eddie. Well - I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” The lights change, and he crosses the street. He does this walk most days, now - there’s a park nearby where he likes to go, where people walk their dogs, and it’s nice just to be outside. One day, he thinks, he’ll drag Richie out with him; stop him from skulking around at home, hiding in his office, doing whatever it is that he’s doing in there. He’s still quiet and subdued; still keeping to himself. It worries Eddie terribly. He doesn’t know how to solve it; doesn’t know how to approach it, even. He should try talking to Richie about it, he knows, but he’s frightened of it all blowing up in his face. If he could just come outside, he thinks - if he would just join him on one of his walks…

“I still -” he hesitates. “I keep thinking I should go back.”

“I know how you feel,” Bev says softly, and Eddie blinks hard, because he knows she does. “I do. But - listen. Remember when I told you about my good days?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, on your good days - are you glad you left?”

Eddie swallows. “Yeah.”

“Then that’s probably a sign you’ve done the right thing.”

Eddie breathes in, slow and deep. “Thanks, Bev. It’s just - it’s when I start thinking too hard. That’s when I feel like I should - I keep getting caught up on stuff. Like - random shit at work I didn’t finish. I had a cactus in the kitchen; I want to know that she’s watering it.”

He feels like crying, suddenly; thinking about that stupid cactus. 

“Hey,” Bev says, “It’s okay. Eddie -”

“I’m okay,” he says, probably a little too loudly. “I’m fine.”

Bev is quiet for a moment. Then she says, “I have an idea. If you wanna hear it?”

“Yeah,” he says, “Go on.”

Bev says, “Well - on your bad days...maybe you can tell me? Tell me you’re having a bad day, and we can talk? And I can remind you of this...remind you of what we’ve talked about before. Remind you you’re doing the right thing. And on my bad days -” She hesitates. 

Eddie says, “You know I’ll - Bev, you know I’ll do the same for you. You absolutely did the right thing, my God, it’s not even - your and my situations aren’t even comparable -”

“What did I tell you about talking like that?” Bev says, and despite himself, Eddie finds himself laughing. 

Bev laughs too, softly, and he’s so grateful for her - so, so grateful, for the thousandth time. “Is that - is that okay?” she asks, eventually. 

Eddie nods. “Yeah,” he says. He’s at the park now. It’s fairly busy - everywhere there are people walking, jogging, and dogs playing and kids shrieking, the sounds of life and happiness, and it’s comforting, to be out there, out of Richie’s house, however nice is is - to be able to see others living their lives, and to think about things other than the clown, other than his own apparent death, other than the weird happenings in Derry. “Yeah. I think that’s - I think that’s a good idea. Thanks, Bev.”

“No problem,” Bev says. “You know I’m always here for you, right? Always.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “Me too. For you, I mean. Even if I’ve been kind of useless up until now. If you need anything, you - you can call me.”

“You’ve not been useless,” Bev says. “You’ve not. It’s good - it’s just nice to talk. You know. To someone who gets...it.”

It’s a different kind of _It, _their _it, _and she’s right - just having someone else there who he doesn’t have to _explain _all that shit to, who gets it without him even having to name it, or articulate why some days he feels so guilty he can barely breathe, why there are times he wants, more than anything, to go back to Myra, head bowed, tail between his legs, even though the thought of it turns his stomach, in truth, which in turn makes him feel even _more _guilty - it’s a relief. 

Eddie says, “You know I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this - leave New York - I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bev says, but Eddie can hear her smiling down the line. “I think you could. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, you know.”

“You too,” Eddie says earnestly, and Bev laughs fondly in his ear. 

“We’re both strong, then,” she says. “We’re both badasses,” and he laughs too, and almost believes it. 

“You still in Chicago?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Bev says “with my friend Kay.” There’s a momentary pause, then she says, “I was thinking of going to visit Ben, y’know, just for a couple days, but I decided not to.”

“Oh!” Eddie says. “Why not?”

There’s a moment of silence down the phone. Then Bev says, “I just - I like him. I like him a lot - Ben. And I know he likes me too.”

Eddie says, “Um, yeah.”

Bev laughs. “I know, I know. And I...it’s so soon. I’m not even divorced. We just remembered each other. I just -” She stops again, and Eddie can picture her, halfway across the country, worrying on her lower lip, fingers fumbling for a cigarette to light. “I keep thinking,” she says, “What if I don’t - what if I don’t _really _like him? What if - I was with Tom so long, and I - what if I’m just so glad to be away from him, I’m, like - latching on to the first…” She trails off. “Sorry. I’m not making any sense.”

“You are,” Eddie says. He thinks about Myra. Thinks about his mother. Thinks about how the only emotion he’d felt after his mother had died and Myra had suggested that they get married had been relief. Then he thinks about Richie - how much he’s been aching for the other man to put his arms around him ever since that night in Jade of the Orient, and long before that; how he feels sick with desperation half the time, shaky and feverish, like he’s coming down with something, and how that starts off all kinds of terrible associations in his head, and how he just feels so - so - _something_. 

“I don’t wanna be with him for the wrong reasons,” Bev says, unhappily. “I don’t wanna string him along. He’s such a great guy.”

“He is,” Eddie says. “Well - you know, if you don’t want him, I think Richie’d take him. He wouldn’t shut up about how _hot _he’d gotten that first night.”

Bev laughs at that, a real, full-bodied laugh. 

“Sorry. I’m not trying to make fun. I know what you’re saying.”

“Yeah,” Bev says. 

They fall quiet again. Eddie watches a fat bulldog lumbering across the grass before him in pursuit of a chewed-up tennis ball.

He says, “What’re you up to today? I didn’t disturb you at work again, did I?”

Bev says, “No. I had therapy today. I decided to take some leave. It’s pretty exhausting.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He thinks, briefly, of his single encounter with therapy, and how he’d not said a thing, but still managed to come out of it feeling battered and bruised. He supposes that’s not how Bev’s sessions go, though. 

He thinks of Stan, too - what Stan had told him, about how he was seeing someone, about the OCD, the depression. He feels a little ill. 

“Bev,” he says, before he can stop himself. 

Bev says, “What’s up, honey?”

Eddie says, “Do you think I should go to therapy?”

“Maybe,” Bev says. She pauses, and then, not unkindly, she says, “I think you need to decide that for yourself, Eddie.”

Eddie swallows. The motion hurts. He wishes it were that simple. 

He’s never been good with decisions. As a child, his mother had made all of his decisions for him, and continued to make them well into adulthood. It had been with great relief that he had let Myra, who was practical and organised and good with decisions, and more than happy to pick up the burden for him, into his life. Even with the Losers, he hadn’t been responsible for much decision-making. Bill was the leader, and when they’d argued amongst themselves, it had been Richie and Bev who spoke up first.

“I know,” he says quietly, because she’s right - of course she’s right. 

After he’s hung up, he sits in the park a while and thinks. 

Perhaps if he sent a grovelling email to his boss, they’d let him have his old job back. Perhaps he could apologise to Myra, cry and beg for her forgiveness. Perhaps he could immerse himself back in that peaceful old sleep-state. 

He closes his eyes; breathes in once, deep and slow. Thinks.

He opens his eyes. The sunlight hits him almost painfully, and he is awake once again. 

*

The digital clock on the dresser reads 3:17 AM. Richie hasn’t yet slept. 

He lays there in the dark, eyes closed, concentrating, listening intently for any sign of life, any sound of movement from the guest room where Eddie sleeps. 

If he hears Eddie moving, he tells himself, he’ll know he’s okay; know he’s really there, he’s really real, _this _is really real…

No sound penetrates the darkness. 

Richie sits up in bed, pressing the heels of both hands into his eyes, hard. Lights wink and dance and spiral behind his eyelids. 

He’s going crazy, he thinks; fucking insane. He’s never felt this fucked-up before, not ever, not even the first time they’d encountered the clown. It’s the Deadlights, he thinks; those goddamn fucking Deadlights. 

That, plus the whole two of his friends returning from beyond the grave thing. 

“Fuck me,” he mumbles into his hands. The words seem to pulse through the black. 

When, he asks himself, will this thing stop? When will he be able to sleep through a night again? When will he be able to make it a whole day without exiting his brain, without spinning in and out from that place behind his eyes, without the horrible sensation that he is not the one piloting his body?

He sits there, head resting on his knees and thinks about Eddie, about Stan, about the weird weather in Derry and It and about the fact that he’s cancelled the rest of his fucking tour and fired his writers and is forty fucking years old and still stuck in the fucking closet because all his life he’s wanted nothing more than to be looked at, but can’t bear to let anybody _see_. 

Karma’s a bitch, he thinks; now it’s him who has no idea what the fucking truth of it all is. 

He’s just thinking about getting up and creeping down the hallway to hover outside Eddie’s bedroom like a fucking weirdo, just to check he’s still there, he’s still alive, he’s safe - when the light clicks on outside his bedroom door. He looks up.

Eddie is peering in through the doorway, eyes narrowed and foggy with sleep. His outline is a little soft - Richie’s glasses are laying discarded on the nightstand - but it’s him. 

“Rich,” he says. His voice is thick and slow. “You awake?”

Richie swallows. “Yeah,” he says. 

Eddie stands at the door, resting his hand against the thick white wood. “What are you doing sitting there in the dark?” he asks. 

Richie tries to say something; finds that he can’t. He doesn’t know. 

“Don’t know,” he tells him, and then he says, “Can’t sleep.”

Eddie sighs, and taps his fingertips against the door. 

Richie doesn’t say anything. 

Then Eddie says, “Can I come in?”

Richie is surprised. He blinks a couple of times. He’s just opening his mouth, about to say, “Yeah,” when Eddie rolls his eyes and slides into his room. 

“Move up,” he says, and drops down onto the end of the bed, next to Richie. 

Richie says, “Um. Could you not sleep either?”

“No,” Eddie says, “I was sleeping very well, actually. You woke me up with all your dramatic sighing.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Sorry.”

Eddie pokes him with his toe. “I’m kidding,” he says softly. He tilts his head to the side; closes his eyes. Richie aches just looking at him. “I had a...bad dream. It woke me up. I could still hear you sighing, though.”

“Oh,” Richie says again, “Well...do you - wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Eddie says.

They sit there together, silent and still in the dark. The only light is a thin, pale path spilling in from the hallway which misses the bed where they’re sitting and instead hits the door into the en-suite. 

“I feel like _I’m _dreaming,” Richie tells him, and Eddie pulls his thighs up to his chest, wraps his arms around his knees, and rests the side of his head there. He’s looking up at Richie, eyes still half-lidded and sleepy, but attentive. Richie says, “I’ve felt like I’m dreaming ever since Derry, honestly.”

“What do you mean?”

Richie shrugs; sighs. His eyes are sore. “I dunno,” he says. “Just - I keep thinking. I don’t know. That none of this can be real.”

Eddie says, “Why not?”

Richie runs his tongue over his teeth; considers. He says, “I mean - after what happened to you. That’s unbelievable enough. Then Stan -”

Eddie says, “You were the first to believe it, though. When I came back. That I was me. That I wasn’t It.”

“I just wanted so badly for it to be true,” Richie says, and his stomach sears at his own honesty. “I just - I couldn’t accept you were gone.”

Eddie blinks, slowly. He doesn’t say anything. 

“Then -” Richie hesitates. He’s saying too much, he thinks. 

“Then what?”

The vision of paradise; of Eddie in his kitchen, pouring him coffee, bickering playfully with him, kissing him, even the stupid fucking dog. Then Eddie launching the metal railing into Pennywise’s mouth; Richie dropping to the ground, pain exploding up his shins and around the back of his head. He still hurts now, though admittedly not in quite the same way. 

He says, carefully: “When...when the clown got me, down beneath the Well House, It...It showed me some stuff.”

Eddie blinks. “Stuff?”

“Yeah.” Richie drags a hand over his chin, trying to figure out how to explain it. “I couldn’t - it wasn’t like having a vision or a dream. I mean it was...it felt real.”

“The Deadlights,” Eddie says. 

Richie nods. 

“But it’s over now. Richie, you know that, right?”

“I know. I know it. I just can’t - believe it. It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” Eddie says. He’s shifted his weight onto one hip, half-turned towards Richie. At this angle, no light touches his face, and Richie hasn’t got his glasses on, but he can see him just fine anyway. He could see Eddie’s face anywhere, he thinks.

“It was...it was _so real_,” Richie says. “Like - even what’s happening now. It felt realer than this. Everything now feels kinda...muted. Like - like I’ve got the volume turned way down. Like I’ve got a blindfold on.”

Eddie says nothing, but he keeps looking up at Richie. Richie feels like he’s been scorched by his gaze; cut open and pulled apart like carrion.

“I saw -” Richie stops. He swallows. “Some of what I saw - some parts of it - feels like it’s coming true. Like - there’s bits that have sort of...not already happened, but there’s...I don’t know. A kernel of truth.” He thinks of the visual of Eddie in his home, surrounded by light. None of the rest of it has a chance in Hell of materialising but it still fucks him up, somehow.

“Okay,” Eddie says, slowly. “Um...which parts?”

Richie stays silent. 

Not to be dissuaded, Eddie says, “Can you tell me what you saw? Any of it?” He pauses. “I wanna help you, Rich.”

Richie presses his lips together a moment. He can do this, he thinks. He’s lived his whole life in a state of half-truth, obfuscating and concealing every aspect of his being. “I saw - you,” he says, at last. “You were alive. It was after we’d killed It. You were alive and you were here. In my house.” He looks away. 

Eddie doesn’t say anything. 

Richie says, “It’s just - we thought you were dead. Then you weren’t. Then you showed up at my house - here you are - and I can’t - I can’t stop thinking that this is all - like the rug’s gonna get pulled -”

“Like you’re still there,” Eddie says, softly. 

Richie nods. 

Eddie sighs. 

Richie tilts his head back to face the ceiling, willing himself not to cry. They sit there beside one another for a long moment. Richie closes his eyes, listens to Eddie breathing, long and slow and deep. He almost jumps out of his skin when he feels Eddie’s little finger touch his own on top of the duvet; turns to look at him. Eddie is looking down at their hands, side-by-side on top of the blankets, just barely, barely touching. 

He says, “Don’t laugh, but, um...it was about my mom.”

Richie feels like he’s missing something. “Uh,” he says.

“My dream,” Eddie says. 

“Oh.” Richie hesitates. Then, because he can’t not, he says, “I have lots of dreams about your mom too, Spaghetti.”

Eddie says, “Fuck you, dude. I fucking hate you sometimes, you know that?”

Richie snorts, already feeling somewhat comforted. Eddie tilts his head to face him. He’s smiling, distantly. 

“Sorry,” Richie says. 

“You’re not sorry,” Eddie says, “you’ve never been sorry for anything, you rude asshole.” He’s still smiling though, still looking at him with those big, soft eyes, and it makes Richie want to wail. 

“I guess,” Richie says. 

Eddie sighs, looks down at his feet. He says, “You know, back - when we were kids...I mean, that summer, I saw her.”

Richie says, “Your mom?”

“Yeah. Like - not _her. _The real her. It - was just pretending to be her.” He bites his lip; twists his fingers together. “It scared me worse than the - the leper actually.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Eddie shrugs, still looking away. “Why would you? I didn’t tell you. C’mon, Rich, you can’t say you wouldn’t have taken that shit and run with it.”

He’s right, of course, Richie thinks. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“It’s okay.” Eddie turns back to him. His eyes glitter through the dark. “I didn’t mind it. Not really. It was - I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was really fucking stupid and annoying, but I guess it made it easier. Like, by joking about it. If you were laughing at it, that meant it wasn’t so scary. It wasn’t so bad.”

“I didn’t know any better,” Richie says. “I didn’t know - Eds, real talk, your mom was a fucking psycho.”

Eddie laughs, but it sounds a little like a sob. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie says again. “Eds, I - I won’t joke about it. Not anymore. It’s stupid, I was stupid -”

“I told you, I don’t mind,” Eddie says. “I don’t.” He sighs, seemingly deflates a little. “It’s good to be able to laugh at things like that, I think. If I didn’t I’d -” He stops. 

Richie bites his tongue. 

“I think I might -” Eddie says. He stops. “I think I might need to...to talk to someone about it, though. Maybe. Not, like, in a joking way. I’ve been talking to Bev. She’s been going to therapy. I...I tried once before. Therapy. My wife made me go. But I was so - I couldn’t.” He stops; Richie sees him clench his teeth. “I _wouldn’t _talk about it. I didn’t want to. I was so - so fucking scared. But I think - I don’t think I can keep acting like it’s not fucking messed up that the supernatural embodiment of our greatest fears pretended to be my mom. That I kept telling myself that everything that she did was okay; that she did the things she did because she _loved _me. I have to do _something, _Rich.” He turns to look at him at last. His eyes are bright and shimmering. “You know?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, softly. “Yeah.”

“I’ve spent so long pretending,” Eddie says, quietly. “Pretending what she did was normal. That it wasn’t a big deal. That what my - how I was living with my wife - that _that _was all okay too.” He looks away. “I think I have a prescription pill problem, y’know.”

Richie says, “I mean, I didn’t wanna say anything.”

“I felt like nothing was real too, you know? Maybe it was the Valium, I don’t...like I’d imagined all the shit with my mom, all the problems with my wife, like everything I was doing was just one big - act. Just drifting about. Like I was in a taxi cab, or something. Feeling numb.”

Richie can relate to that. He says, “I know what you mean.” They’ve both been pretending, he supposes, in their own ways. 

“This, though,” Eddie says, and his fingers twitch against Richie’s again, “this is real, Rich, I promise you. Look at me Richie,” and when Richie looks, Eddie is staring up at him with that sweet, wonderfully earnest expression he’s longed for without realising all these long years. “I promise you, this is real.”

Richie says, “I feel like I’m gonna blink any second and I’ll be back down there. And you’ll be -”

“You won’t,” Eddie says, surprisingly firmly, “and I won’t. I won’t let that happen.” Weirdly, it almost makes Richie feel better. 

“Thanks, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says, and Eddie tells him to shut up, and flicks his fingers against Richie’s hand. Richie isn’t quite sure what to make of that. 

They sit there together quietly. After a moment, Eddie says, “What do you - what do you think about what I said? About the therapy. I think...I think maybe I should give it a go.”

Richie says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s worth a try. I tried once, but it...like I said, it was Myra’s idea. It fucking sucked. _I _sucked at it. I only went once.”

“I had to go,” Richie tells him. “You know. When I was using.”

Eddie says, “How was it?”

“Shitty.”

“Oh.” Eddie seems to deflate. 

“Hey,” Richie nudges him. “Don’t let me put you off. You have to really want it, I think. You have to be honest. I lie about everything, so…” He shrugs.

Eddie looks up at him. “No you don’t,” he says, softly. 

Richie shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Went forty years without telling anyone I like dick, didn’t I?”

“Richie,” Eddie says. His smallest finger curls around Richie’s. It’s easier in the dark. 

“It’s true.”

“You don’t lie to me,” Eddie says. “You don’t lie to us. The Losers. And it’s not _lying. _It’s - I get it, okay.”

Richie sighs. 

“You should talk to Stan,” Eddie says. “You know? He wants to talk to you too. I meant it when I said he isn’t mad. But I think he feels the same as you. He’s having a hard time getting his head around everything; harder than he lets on, I think.”

Richie says, “He had a hard time with it when we were kids.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He peers carefully through the darkness at Richie. “How did you know that?”

Richie shrugs. It’s hard to explain. He doesn’t know if Stan would agree with him, but that summer he’d very quickly formed the opinion that Stan was more horrified by the notion of It as a concept that stretched the bounds of his known reality than by the fact that kids were going missing. Richie and Eddie, who had spent much of their childhoods immersed in superhero comics and cartoons and horror movies (the latter with much reluctance on Eddie’s part) had not had that difficulty. 

“Stan was always like...an old soul,” Richie says. The phrasing is something he remembers his mother saying about Stan, when they were teens. “He couldn’t imagine it. I always thought it was kinda weird he believed in God but not the clown.”

Eddie laughs, hard, like he’s said something genuinely hilarious. 

“What?”

Eddie, grinning, shakes his head. “Oh...just you,” he says. 

Richie doesn’t know what that means. He looks away. “I will talk to Stan,” he says, “I will. Maybe tomorrow. Well. Today.”

“I think it might help. I know you want us all to think you’re big and tough and all your feelings were surgically removed and replaced by jokes, but it’s okay, y’know. To be scared.” He elbows him gently. “Take it from me.”

Richie smiles. He doesn’t think it’s quite as straightforward as Eddie’s making it sound, but still. It’s a starting point, he supposes. 

Eddie says, “And - by the way. You don’t have...you know. Tell people you like dick, not if you don’t want to.” 

The way he says it - _like dick _\- is so soft and prim, it makes Richie laugh. 

“What?” Eddie says, scowling up at him. 

“Nothing,” Richie says. He winks, and Eddie, for some reason, looks somewhat flustered, and turns away. “Sorry, sorry. I guess. I don’t know. I kind of - want people to know? Or like - no, I don’t _want _them to know, because it’s none of their fucking business and it shouldn’t matter, I just...I guess I’m just sick of hiding it. Of pretending to be someone I’m not. Y’know. Telling all those stupid jokes about tits and pussy and my non-existant girlfriend.”

“I understand,” Eddie says, quietly. 

He doesn’t, Richie thinks, but he keeps that thought to himself. He says, “I just don’t wanna...I mean, it was hard enough saying it in a text to you guys. It was - I mean, it was fucking _exhausting, _Eds. The thought of having to do it again, and then again, and again, and again, to a whole bunch of people…”

He trails off. He imagines it; baring himself again and again, peeling himself raw like an onion until there’s nothing of him left and he’s been totally consumed. All the people he’ll have to tell - his dad, his family, Steve, Rosie, his colleagues, his friends in LA, on the comedy circuit...the notion is honestly exhausting. Besides, he thinks, who knows how they’ll react? He thinks of the arcade; the newspaper stories he saw; the giggles and whispered slurs and jokes; the jokes _he himself _had made; the words _he’d _said. If _he’d _said those things, he thinks, why shouldn’t other people?

Eddie says, “I’m sorry, Rich. I wish there was something I could do to make it easier.” He pauses, seeming to hesitate. Then he says, “_Are_ you - scared? Of saying it again, I mean?”

Richie thinks about it. _Scared _doesn’t seem like the right word; not after Pennywise; not after everything they went through. But, he guesses, in truth he _is _scared, of another incident like the one in the arcade all those years ago, of people hating him, turning their backs on him, of losing friends, family, fans, his career. It’s a different kind of fear, he thinks, but it is fear nonetheless, and perhaps it’s even more penetrating and deep-rooted than the fear of the clown. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose; rubs his eyes. Suddenly he feels tired; tired enough to sleep, even. “Yeah,” he says to Eddie. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

The blankets rustle as Eddie shifts his position on the bed. His left hand is still touching Richie’s right, just. 

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. Then he hears Eddie say, “I’m - I’m scared too. I’m scared of going to therapy and telling someone all the stuff I’ve been hiding and finding out that my mom did more damage than a fucking - alien monster clown. And I’m scared of finding out that half the shit I’ve been taking is doing more harm than good. And I’m scared of telling my wife what I think I’ve gotta tell her.” He pauses, and breathes in, and Richie hears the way his breath shakes in his chest. He wants to reach out; pull Eddie against him like he did the other day; to try and comfort him. But it’s different, in the dark, on his bed. He doesn’t want Eddie to think he wants anything; that he’s trying to _do _something to him. 

Then Eddie sighs, and says, “But we’ve been scared before, right? Both of us, scared together?”

Richie thinks of the house on Neibolt street - Eddie’s broken arm - the way he’d clung to his side - the projector in Bill’s garage and the way the clown had loomed and leered and drooled - the sewers - Bowers and his gang. He thinks about how he’d held Eddie’s hand, squeezed his shoulder, pulled him out of harm’s way, fought beside him, _won _with him. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

Eddie says, “I guess we’ll just have to do it again.”

He turns to look at Eddie, his brave, beautiful best friend. 

“Yeah,” he says, “I guess we will.”

Eddie smiles, looking up at him in that unbearable way he does, his eyes all big and soulful. He says, “We can do another blood pact if you like?”

Richie cackles, and Eddie’s face splits into a wide grin. “Fucking Bill,” he says. “What kind of psychopathic shit was that?”

“I blame the parents,” Eddie says, and they collapse into one another, snorting with laughter.

“Thanks, Spaghetti,” Richie says, eventually. 

Eddie closes his eyes. “Don’t call me that,” he says. He sighs, and leans against Richie’s shoulder. 

He shouldn’t, he knows, but he can’t help it. He tips his head sideways; rests his cheek against the top of Eddie’s head. He’s warm, and his hair smells good. 

“We’ll be okay, Eds,” he says, eventually, and Eddie hums in agreement. “We’ll figure it out together.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, quietly. The words vibrate against Richie’s skin. “Together.”

*

Edie, when he puts his mind to a thing, is as stubborn as a mule - Richie knows this from hours spent watching him yelling at the arcade machines back in Derry, desperately trying to beat Richie’s scores at Pac-Man and Galaga and Street Fighter. Still, he hadn’t quite expected that the morning after their heart-to-heart in his bedroom he would slope downstairs to find the other man cross-legged at the dining table, Googling _therapy Sherman Oaks _and _therapy Los Angeles, _pouring over reviews and testimonials and checking each therapist’s website for information on which insurance providers they work with. 

“You’re up early,” he says, yawning, and Eddie, not even looking up, snaps that it’s ten thirty.

“Well, excuse the fuck out of me,” Richie says, “Some of us didn’t get to sleep until like four AM,” and goes to turn the coffee maker and the radio on.

Eddie, seemingly somewhat embarrassed, murmurs out an apology, and continues to scroll down whatever page he’s looking at on his laptop. 

“Any news?” Richie asks. It’s something they’ve started asking one another every morning now, referring to Derry, the storm and the floods and the sinkhole, and all the other shit that’s happened since they left. Every morning, whoever’s up first will check the group chat, the news from Maine, anything he can find. So far, there’s been nothing new to report. Still, Richie knows, that doesn’t promise anything. He supposes they won’t know for sure that the hell the town has endured since time immemorial is over for sure until 2043. It’s a sobering thought. 

Eddie shakes his head, and Richie sighs. Hearing no news is good news, he thinks, probably, but he can’t shake the feeling that they’re all just sitting around waiting for something terrible to befall them. 

It makes him feel a little sick when he thinks about it for too long, so he shakes the thought off, and begins poking around in the refrigerator for something to eat. 

“You get anywhere?” he asks Eddie, over his shoulder. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to ask, really. As close as he’d felt to Eddie the night before - and he suddenly remembers, with a shock, Eddie touching his hand, Eddie leaning into his side - there’s something about the clear spotlight of morning that makes everything they’d discussed feel too real. At night, in the dark, he thinks, when his thoughts are scrambled and the curtains are drawn, it’s almost easier.

But Eddie doesn’t seem upset by his asking. He just adjusts his position at the table, and says, “Maybe. I’ve found a couple who seem okay. I guess I’ll start ringing around later on. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, to be honest.” He pulls a funny little face that makes Richie grin as he turns away to carry a box of eggs and a packet of bacon over to the stove. “It feels, um, weirdly like I’m looking for apartments, or cars, or something.”

“How is it supposed to feel?” Richie says. He retrieves a large frying pan from the cupboard to his right. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie says.

Richie hums, turns up the volume on the radio. He says, “I can ask around for you, if you like. See if anyone I know has any recommendations? I would _not _recommend the lady I saw, I can tell you that.”

Eddie sits up a little straighter at the table, looking rather scandalised. “Richie! That information is - incredibly personal. Your friends won’t _want _to let you know whether or not they’re seeing therapists, are you crazy?”

Richie laughs, which just makes Eddie furrow his brow even more. “This is LA, Eds,” he says, but Eddie just looks even more confused, which is unbearably endearing. He turns back to his cooking, still smiling. 

He hears Eddie close his laptop with a snap behind him, and reaches for the cooking spray. He’d only bought it because Eddie had expressed horror when Richie had revealed that previously he’d been using butter to fry things, exclaiming, “Rich, your _arteries!” _whatever that was supposed to mean. But then again, he had offered Eddie a peanut M&M the other day, and Eddie had eaten it, with only mild fretting about a potential allergy. (It turns out that Sonia Kasprak had told Eddie he was allergic to nuts, although Eddie doesn’t remember ever taking an allergy test at the doctors, nor does he recall ever actually experiencing anything that could constitute true anaphylactic shock, which, statistically, Richie had argued, was somewhat unlikely, given the amount of foodstuffs allegedly containing traces of nut. Eddie had practically trembled when he’d raised the candy to his mouth, which Richie now, following their conversation the previous night, feels bad for laughing at. Eddie had been fine, of course, though he still reads the ingredients of every food item he puts near his mouth with great care.) Stil, Richie thinks, progress is progress, and honestly he can’t taste the difference between food fried in butter, and food fried in Eddie’s stupid low-fat shit, so it’s a sacrifice he doesn’t mind making. 

Whatever advert is playing on the radio comes to an end, and a familiar song begins. Richie pushes the bacon around the pan, humming. 

He hears Eddie stand up, cross the room. “What is this?” he says, leaning over the kitchen island, “baseball radio?”

Richie laughs, glancing back at him. “Would you rather I play some Whitney?”

Eddie ducks his head. “Shut up,” he says. He’s still smiling though, cheeks dimpling. In the short time he’s spent in California, he’s already begun to develop a slight tan, Richie notices, and across the bridge of his nose a soft smattering of freckles has formed. Richie had forgotten about the freckles. He remembers old summers together, the way Eddie had seemed to blossom beneath the sun like a flower, the way his cheeks and the tips of his ears had pinked as the months free from school had worn on, the way his hair had begun to wave when they were swimming in the quarry every day and Eddie was able to escape from his house free from gels and pomades. As they’d grown older, Richie had found himself having to disguise many an awkward boner around the other boy. Richie had grown quickly - he remembers his mother complaining about all the clothes he’d stretched out - and although Eddie had stayed small by comparison, his face had seemed to Richie to become exponentially more beautiful by the day as he lost the baby fat and developed cheekbones and a neat, elfin chin. His limbs had lengthened too, though they remained narrow - Mrs Kaspbrak had rarely allowed her son to participate in sports - and his honey dark calves and thighs had spilt torturously across Richie, first in the hammock, then later in his car, or in the barrens whilst the steadily dwindling group of Losers had sprawled beneath the searing sun. He remembers attempting to disguise his hungry gaze behind large dark sunglasses in the heat of the summer as they sunbathed beside the water, staring hopelessly at what had seemed to be miles and miles of untouchable Eddie, the sight of a stray freckle peeking from the hem of his increasingly short shorts enough to leave him sleepless and panting like a dog at night. 

It’s hard to fathom that he’s still so beautiful now, though Richie suspects that Eddie could be sunburnt and balding, and he would still want to worship at his feet. That’s how deep he’s in, he’s beginning to realise. 

He had wondered, foolishly, if perhaps after having Eddie stay with him a few days, his brain would finally catch on to the fact that it’s been over twenty years; that they’re not the same people anymore, that his silly childhood crush was just that; ephemeral, ridiculous. And yet it has not. He loves Eddie, he knows, still, loves him with the innocent ardour of a child first discovering the thrill of infatuation; loves him with the wild, painful abandon of a teen in a town too small with secrets too dark and deep to be spoken aloud; and, worse, loves him now - loves him as an adult, as a man who knows how these things go, how they never work out, and yet falls nevertheless, arms and heart flayed open, hoping that perhaps, _perhaps, _this time things will be different, this time the love will stick and he will not be too frightened to feed it, and they will both swallow it whole and be full. 

The idea is ridiculous, irrational, he tells himself - he’s been disappointed in love before, mostly through his own misdeeds - and there is no point in convincing himself that _this _\- Eddie being in his house, Eddie coming to him after whatever it was that had happened with his wife - will be any different purely because Richie has been crazy for him since day dot. 

Still -

Still. 

Eddie is here, Eddie is in his home, resting his face against his fist, elbow on the countertop, watching Richie cook, and he is smiling behind his hand, beautiful and soft-looking in the golden morning light. And Richie Tozer is a weak, weak man. 

“Hands, touching hands,” Neil Diamond sings on the radio, and, leaving the bacon sizzling on the stovetop behind him, Richie turns to face Eddie, joining in and bellowing the lyrics into the wooden spatula he’s still holding. 

Eddie laughs - like he always does, he always laughs, and it’s the only reason Richie’s ever wanted to be funny. 

“Reaching out,” the radio calls, and Eddie, realising why Richie’s sashaying across the kitchen towards him, shakes his head, standing up straight from where he’s leaning against the counter. His arms are outstretched, like he’s about to push Richie away, but he doesn’t; his hands are soft, and when Richie grabs hold of him, fumbling with the spatula and dropping it to the floor in the same movement, he goes easily, still shaking his head, still laughing, as Richie yells “touching me, touching you,” as obnoxiously loudly as he can, because it’s a joke, it’s okay if this is a joke -

“Sweet Caroline,” Neil Diamond croons, and Eddie leans forwards and yells “Boom boom boom!” into Richie’s face at the very second Richie does the same to him. 

They’re laughing, both of them, and Richie’s still singing, despite Eddie’s dramatic protestations - “Rich, you can’t sing, you can’t sing!” - in his old-timey 1950’s crooner voice, the one his dad used to put on for his mom years ago, whirling her around to the stereo in the living room, though it hardly suits this particular song - and Eddie is throwing his head back and laughing, clutching Richie’s shoulders tightly as he is swept in circles on the wood floor like he’s in danger of falling. 

And it’s a joke, it’s still a joke, of course, holding Eddie around the waist, linking their hands high in the air, fingers between fingers, rocking the other man from side to side. But the words are “How can I hurt when holding you?” and Richie can’t help but think, staring down at Eddie, whose dimples are out in full force, tongue between his teeth in an effort to control his laughter, who isn’t pulling away, not even a little, that old Neil must have been onto something. 

Eddie lets go of his hand, then - and that’s it, it’s over, it must be - only then he’s throwing it over Richie’s left shoulder to join the other. Richie flounders for a moment, uncertain of what to do with his suddenly free hand, when Eddie suddenly says, “You know you’re a fucking shitty dancer.”

Richie says, “Yeah, well, this isn’t my usual style. I’m more of a square dancer, to be honest.”

Eddie snorts into his shoulder, and Richie, emboldened, leans in close to his ear and whispers, “Howdy pardner.”

Eddie dissolves into laughter again, and Richie finds that both of his arms have somehow wound their way around the other man’s waist. 

“I can just imagine,” Eddie says when he’s recovered, “you, square dancing with some poor girl at prom.”

“I wish you hadn’t moved away before prom,” Richie says, and Eddie’s eyes widen, just a bit. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Wish I could’ve taken your mom.”

“You’re an asshole,” Eddie tells him, but he’s still grinning, and his arms are still wrapped around Richie’s shoulders. 

“Me and Sonia, square dancing into the night. Could’ve driven her out to the Barrens after. Spent a little time in the back seat of my car, if you know what I -” He stops suddenly, catches himself, remembering their conversation the previous night. Shit, he thinks, shit. 

But Eddie just beams up at him, like Richie’s the funniest motherfucker on the planet, and fuck, Jesus fuck, Richie doesn’t deserve him. “Shut up!” Eddie says. His eyes are big and bright and golden. 

Richie, relaxing a little, says, “Don’t be jealous, Eddie my love. What me and your mom had was special.”

The song’s finished - they’re playing something else now, some other song that doesn’t really fit the way they’re swaying together, something that Richie doesn’t recognise, but he doesn’t stop. Neither does Eddie. 

“Beep beep Richie,” Eddie says. His voice is quieter now, and Richie has to duck his head in a little closer to hear him. 

Sunbeams spill across the floor and the table and the cabinets, setting the white wood aglow. Eddie, bathed in the light, looks radiant, despite the horrible polo shirt and dark wash jeans he’s wearing. 

“Eds,” Richie says, only he doesn’t know what to say next.

Eddie says, “Don’t call me that.” Their faces are so close he can feel the other man's breath against his neck. “You know I hate it when you do that.”

They’re so close. He can smell Eddie’s shampoo; count the lighter flecks of amber in his eyes. 

“No you don’t,” he says. His lips brush against Eddie’s face as he speaks.

Eddie’s gaze is lowered. His eyelashes are ridiculously thick and dark, the kind any woman would kill for, Richie thinks, and suddenly he finds himself wondering if Eddie’s looking away because he’s uncomfortable - if Richie is being creepy and pushy and needy, if Eddie really doesn’t want this. But he’s still smiling, just a little, and his arms are still wrapped around Richie’s shoulders, and his body is a long line of warmth pressed against the front of Richie’s own. 

Eddie says, “Are we dancing to Justin Beiber right now? I just wanna be clear that that’s what’s happening.”

“Oh,” Richie says, “is that who it is?” Their noses are bumping together. 

Eddie makes no move to pull his face back. “You still only listen to dead musicians, huh.”

Richie says, “Pretty much.” It’s not quite true, but it’s close enough. Growing up, he’d loved nothing more than combing through his dad’s old Beatles and Stones vinyls. He’d even loved the old Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald records his partially-deaf grandmother had played at full volume during their annual visits to her home in Vermont. He remembers, suddenly, during one of those visits discovering The Chordettes; sitting and listening to that one particular song on repeat one stormy afternoon, arms wrapped around his knees, mouth open. 

It had become a joke when he’d arrived back in Derry - just another means of teasing Eddie, which was, of course, nothing more than a ploy to affix the other boy’s attention upon him - but still, on occasion, he would listen to that song, late at night, alone in his room, and his throat would fill up with - something. 

They’re still slowly spinning around the kitchen, slowly, slowly. Eddie sighs against his throat, and Richie wonders what it means. The morning light is silver and everything in his home is aflame in bright, fresh light. The white cabinets and the pale wood floor and the shining black marble are aglow, gleaming and flaring beneath the rising sun, and for a moment, Richie can imagine he’s simply suspended, floating in a wide white void, alone with Eddie, with nothing else to intrude or worry them, no prying eyes, no press, no stupid fights with friends, no natural disasters, no goddamn clown - just the two of them, holding onto one another. 

He looks down at Eddie, and he burns - he wants to look at Eddie forever, always has, always will do - and then Eddie looks back up at him, with those stupid big Bambi eyes that drive Richie crazy, and the corners of his eyes crinkle like they’re sharing a secret. 

“I think the bacon’s burning,” he murmurs, and Richie hums, and neither of them move to check.

They don’t kiss - but it’s a close thing. Richie leans down, presses his forehead against Eddie’s - or the top of Eddie’s head, really, it’s easier to reach, and he could make a joke about that, tease him, but he swallows down the temptation; instead, rubs his thumb gently up and down where it rests against Eddie’s back. 

Eddie sighs again, and the sound is a little shaky to Richie’s ears - or maybe that’s just the sound of his own breath, his own heart, about to pound its way out of his chest. 

He can feel it; Eddie’s breath against his skin, and then Eddie tips his head back a little, and he feels it against his lips, and it’s _torture, _pure torture, but Richie wouldn’t swap it for a thing. 

They still don’t kiss, though their mouths must, Richie reckons, be less than an inch apart, and Eddie keeps starting up at him with that heavy-lidded gaze, and Richie has no idea what it means - but somehow - and perhaps, he thinks, he is projecting - but somehow _not _kissing makes it feel even more intimate. They’re sharing air, Richie thinks, with the dizzy joy of a thirteen-year-old - sharing air, and sharing something else, maybe, maybe this moment means something; it must do. 

They don’t kiss - but it must mean something, he thinks. 


End file.
